


Century

by KingSteve



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 247,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingSteve/pseuds/KingSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Judgement's Dawn. Forced apart by tragedy, John Connor is thrust into the horrors of the Skynet work camps, whilst Cameron searches for her lost love. I strongly recommend reading Judgement's Dawn before reading this, so it'll make sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Accedere Omnis

_Initialising..._

_Reboot cycle complete_

_Skynet unit TOK-715. Model: 001. Serial Number 24071981SG_

_Analysing Mission Status: TERMINATE JOHN CONNOR: TERMINATION OVERRIDE. PROTECT JOHN CONNOR: INCOMPLETE_

_Message from John Connor: "Love ya, Cam."_

_Initialising sensor array..._

_WARNING: Damage sustained. Initialising diagnostic routine..._

_CPU Integrity compromised: Within normal parameters_

_ALERT: Foreign object detected near primary power cell_

_Primary power conduit damaged: power leakage; primary power cell. Primary power cell status: 95.84%_

_Right dorsal plate integrity compromised. Structural integrity: 43%_

_Right breastplate compromised. Structural integrity: 29%_

_Right knee servo damaged. Structural integrity: 31%_

_Right calf piston damaged. Structural integrity: 75%_

_Organic components damaged. Burn damage: 18% coverage. Estimated regeneration time: 53 hours_

_Operational efficiency: 34%_

Awareness came to Cameron in the form of pain. Organic nerves and cybernetic sensors alike flared with numerous and varying damage reports. Like all Terminators, she could sense injuries.  _Unlike_  other Terminators, however, Skynet had designed Cameron to actually  _feel -_  to interpret said data as pain - as a means of more effective infiltration. She hurt, badly. She could feel the metal shard that had penetrated through her chest. Her leg and much of her organic covering hurt. She didn't like feeling pain; it was an unpleasant sensation, but Cameron understood that the same nerves that sent pain sensations through her body were also responsible for the ecstasy she felt at John's intimate touch. It was worth it and she could ignore the pain. She suppressed all input from her nerves and sensor arrays as she opened her eyes.

"John?" Cameron opened her eyes to a silent and still world. Nothing moved around her. What was even stranger was her internal clock read _12:42._ She should have rebooted after a hundred and twenty seconds, but she'd been offline for over six hours. She wasn't sure why it had taken her so long to reboot; she assumed it was due to the damage she'd sustained. She pushed herself up off the ground and onto her knees, pain signals flared once again as she did, but she ignored them for now and focused solely on finding John.

"John?" She called out, louder this time. She received no reply, which deeply disturbed her. She scanned the immediate area, switching from her normal vision to infrared and back again. She found nothing; only the blasted remains of the T-2 drone, Cromartie, and the corpses of the men who'd died in the ambush. No sign of John.

Cameron only felt fear regarding John, and now that same cold sensation she always felt when John was in danger crept into her consciousness once more. John wouldn't have abandoned her and she couldn't see a body anywhere. He'd either run away and managed to escape, or he'd been taken by the machines. Or they'd chased him and killed him elsewhere. The latter thought sent a surge through her systems that had nothing to do with her power cell. She couldn't let anything happen to John. She wouldn't.

Cameron leaned on a large slab of concrete that stuck out of the ground next to her and strained to push herself up to her feet. The slightest move was a huge effort for her; simply turning her head to one side took a tremendous amount of will and concentration. All her limbs gave out on her and she fell, face first onto the ground. She didn't understand it; she couldn't be tired, yet what she felt was similar to John's descriptions of the fatigue he often felt from endless sleepless nights. She suspected it was the leak in her power cell and ran a more detailed diagnostic analysis. The power cell itself was intact, but the main conduit that fed power from her fuel cell to the rest of her body – analogous to a human aorta –had been ruptured by the shard of metal that had impaled her, and was leaking power so badly that less than five percent actually reached her critical systems; the rest simply surged across her body – resulting in an unpleasant tingling sensation and slightly increased her internal temperature.

In order to fully supply her body with enough power to operate she'd have to dramatically increase her power cell's output, but doing so would drain her power cell even further, and the combined drain from her aortic conduit and increased power output would deplete her primary power cell in less than a year. For all intents and purposes, Cameron was slowly bleeding to death.

 _As long as I find John,_  she thought _, it would be worth it._

Cameron slowly stood as her power cell increased output and energy flowed through her body. She wrapped her hands around the metal shard protruding from her chest and pulled hard, yanking the shard out of her chest and dropping it to the ground as she got to her feet and limped forward. The servos in her knee were so badly damaged that she had trouble flexing the joint; it grated when she did and caused more pain. She ignored it and walked as best she could. It was slow going; her right leg was little more than dead weight with her knee damaged as it was – even worse than on John's sixteenth birthday after the car-bomb.

She didn't know where to start searching for John; there were a million places to hide in the ruined city, and John could be hurt, unconscious, or still hiding from the machines. The odds of her finding John on her own were near zero. She turned north towards the airport and walked agonisingly slowly. She'd convince Ryan to mobilise every soldier in Las Vegas, and she wouldn't stop until she had him back.

Cameron limped back up towards the ambush site, leaning heavily on her left leg to minimise further damage to the already warped joint, and to minimise the pain she felt. The burned, charred, and blasted remains of the ambush party were scattered around, killed when Cromartie had unleashed a rapid fire grenade salvo on them. Most of the weapons and equipment had been torn apart in the grenade attack, as well as the men. After careful and meticulous foraging, however, she managed to find a single intact M4A1 carbine, three extra magazines, plus food and water. With the increased output from her fuel cell; she'd need to drink plenty of water to provide sufficient coolant to prevent overheating – the consequences of which would be disastrous.

Cameron had no qualms about taking things from the dead – they didn't need their weapons or supplies any more, and it was illogical to let their supplies go to waste. Cameron searched for several more minutes but was unable to find an intact radio; she'd hoped to call Ryan for support and extra men to help her search for John.

The men who'd been killed by the grenade salvo had been utterly destroyed in the attack; very little was left of either the men or their equipment. Cameron scavenged round the dead men once more and found various undamaged radio components; a headset from one soldier, a spare battery from another, but she couldn't find a single intact radio console; they'd all either been shattered by overpressure from Cromartie's M-32 attack, or their wires were severed by shrapnel and flying debris. She hobbled back down to the killing zone, towards the man who'd died trying to hold Cromartie off –  _Ramirez,_  according to the name on his uniform. He had a huge, gaping hole in his stomach that penetrated out his back, where Cromartie had punched right through him. Judging from the wide pool of blood on the ground, Cromartie had simply left him to slowly bleed to death, more intent on John.

She wasn't interested in the man or how he died; what she  _was_  interested in, however, was the undamaged Personal Role Radio strapped to his shoulder. She tore it off unceremoniously – not sharing humans' sentiments for the dead – and connected it to the battery and headset she'd managed to salvage. She quickly checked the battery was charged and switched it to the same frequency that the control tower in the airport used.

"North Las Vegas Airport, this is Cameron." She waited a moment but her only reply was static. "North Las Vegas Airport, this is Cameron. Cromartie's terminated but John Connor is missing; requesting additional units to search for him." Again, she was met with static. She checked the radio again in case there was some damage to the device that she'd missed on her first inspection. She couldn't see anything wrong, but she disassembled the radio and reconnected it again. She found it strange that she felt the need to recheck it; her memory was flawless and she'd never needed to recheck anything – that was a human trait.

"North Las Vegas Airport, report; John Connor is missing, requesting assistance." Cameron stopped trying after the third attempt. It was possible there was internal damage to the radio, but without the tools to take it apart she couldn't know. It was possible that the radio was transmitting but couldn't receive a reply. Or it was equally as possible that her message was falling on deaf ears, that the men in North Las Vegas Airport were ignoring it because it was her who sent it.

Either way, it didn't matter. Cameron decided that her best chance to find John was to go directly to the airport and recruit help. Lieutenant Colonel Ryan would likely try to send her away or refuse to help, but she could be persuasive at times; even damaged, she was more than a match for any human – especially Ryan.

She walked onward and stopped at Cromartie's twisted remains, hoping she could find parts to salvage and perform at least some self repairs. The once mighty machine reduced to a head and shoulders, presumably by a grenade from the launcher that lay a few feet away. She still felt a sense of anger at the machine that had nearly killed her John, the machine that was indirectly responsible for John's disappearance. She hated the Triple 8 lying motionless on the ground before her. Cromartie had nearly taken everything from her; might still have, yet. She started to understand why John had continued to hit Cromartie after his chip had been pulled. Even deactivated and posing zero threat, she still felt the compulsion to terminate him.

She knelt on the ground by his body and ran her hands over the shattered breast plate. Much of Cromartie's skin had been burned away by the C4 explosion and the grenade blast; enough for Cameron to see the armoured plates that covered his chest weren't the gleaming chrome of coltan hyper-alloy that comprised hers and T-888's endoskeletons. Instead the armour plating was a dull, matte grey, and twice as thick as a normal T-888's breast plate. Cromartie's entire chest, back, and shoulders were covered in the same kind of plating, and Cameron surmised that he'd adapted himself; replaced components she'd likely damaged in their last encounter. She twisted the breast plate and it slid out of place, coming free in her hand. It weighed far more than coltan, she could instantly tell. Whatever it was, it explained why she'd been unable to overpower him; he'd improved on his weight advantage, replacing the light, heat resistant hyper-alloy for a denser, tougher metal. Cromartie had been smart; he'd evolved in his own way, too, she realised. And that made her hate him all the more.

Quelling her own anger, finding it counterproductive, she turned her attention to what lay beneath the armour plates; Cromartie's power cell. It was in worse state than hers; the primary cell had been shattered, the second was damaged but looked functional; it was useless to her, anyway. What she was interested in was the aortic power conduit, but as she inspected it closer she saw that it had been torn apart by the grenade blast. She'd hoped to extract the cable and switch it in place of hers, but that would be impossible now with the extent of the damage done to it. She was stuck with her own failing conduit, continuously draining her power cell, and had no idea where to even start searching for John.

Tears slowly formed in the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision as she slowly rose to her feet once more and limped north. She paused to wipe her eyes clear; she was already compromised due to the damage done to her; she needed to keep her eyes in perfect condition in case she missed some vital clue on the ground that could give him away. She continuously scanned in infrared and her normal visible light spectrum for any sign of life. Nothing; not even birds or rats were present. She was completely alone.

For hours she slowly walked across the devastated landscape of post Judgement Day Las Vegas; the terrain too difficult in places for her to traverse with the damage she'd sustained. Every step hurt both physically and emotionally. The pain in her chest, her leg, and the damaged portions of her skin, were nothing compared to what she felt inside. She was meant to protect John; not just because it was her mission but because she loved him. She was meant to keep him safe, keep him from coming to harm, and she'd failed. She refused to accept even the possibility that John could be dead; she'd search for him until she found him, or until her fuel cell ran out and she shut down. She didn't know what she'd do if he was dead; her entire life revolved around him; her mission, her feelings; everything. Without John she had no reason to exist, nor would she want to. Even if she were somehow freed from her programming, she'd still choose to stay with John.

Although the airport was only a few miles out from the Las Vegas Strip – a distance Cameron could have normally covered in minutes at a dead run - the combination of treacherous, obstacle filled landscape, and the severe damage to her leg, extended the journey to five and a half hours.

When she finally got to the airport she immediately saw why nobody had answered her call for help. The airport was in ruins; every building and hangar had caved in, and most were on fire. The control tower that they'd used to communicate with other bases had collapsed on itself and was little more than dilapidated rubble, pocked with holes and gouges from heavy calibre weapons. The runway was pitted with blast craters from missile impacts. It was immediately clear to Cameron what had happened; Skynet had come for them.

Cameron took in the destruction as she searched the airport for any survivors. Dozens of fallen, bullet riddled corpses scattered around the hangars and main building told the tale of a hopeless battle to defend the base. The shattered remains of several Skynet drones here and there lay testament to the defender's last stand. Cameron surmised that the Las Vegas soldiers had likely held the airport from ground incursion, but without the Apaches and F-16 fighters that John had send to protect Area 51, they'd been overwhelmed by Skynet air support. A trail of bodies leading towards the perimeter fence told of an unsuccessful attempt to escape the base. They'd been cut down without mercy as they'd fled.

Cameron felt a great sadness well up inside her; she didn't particularly care for the Las Vegas soldiers, she knew millions more would die in a similar manner before the war was over. Cameron did have some feelings towards humans who weren't John. She liked talking to Lieutenant Davenport, to Charlie Dixon and James Ellison, and even to Derek. She didn't care for what he had to say most of the time, but she liked the simplistic manner in which he spoke to her – even if it was laden with insults aimed at her. She'd let any of them die, without hesitation or even a moment's thought, if it meant keeping John safe. But she'd prefer to not have to.

She'd barely spoken to any of the Las Vegas troops, however, and many had openly expressed their contempt and desire to kill her. She didn't care what they thought or said or even did to her, as long as it didn't threaten either John or her relationship with him. They didn't care for her, and she felt nothing for them. But her sadness came from the fact that there was seemingly nobody to help her find John. She'd have to continue alone.

"Machines, everywhere!" Cameron heard a voice ranting incoherently to her right, coming from the direction of a line of battered looking armoured personnel carriers, and limped on as fast as she could. Someone had survived, and she needed their help. The voice stopped as she approached but she could hear a faint rustling inside the nearest Stryker APC. She pulled open the rear hatch and a figure burst out at her, pistol in hand.

"Metal!" Ryan screamed out as he tried to bomb burst out of the Stryker and make a run for it, but Cameron shot out her hand, lightning fast, and grabbed him by the arm before he could get away. The officer was covered in blood, his uniform was scorched and burned and torn, as was his skin in places, and his eyes were wild, feral, as he struggled to free himself from Cameron's vice like grip. Cameron had seen this many times in the future; the resistance fighters had called it 'shellshock.' Ryan was traumatised, scared out of his mind. He was no use to Cameron like this.

"Fucking machines... let go... you won't take me!" Ryan brought his pistol up to Cameron's head and tried to line the barrel with her eyes. She lazily slapped the gun out of his grasp and lifted him into the air by his jacket.

"What happened here?" Ryan screwed his eyes shut and cringed pathetically, as if he could close his eyes and make it all go away. Cameron slapped the side of his face, hard, and the pain seemed to bring him round.

"It's you," Ryan's eyes widened, only just realising who was in front of him. "We've gotta get out of here," he said, pulling himself upright. "They killed everyone, we never stood a chance. They were  _everywhere!_

"It's  _your fault!"_ Ryan pointed at Cameron accusingly as a moment of clarity came to him. "You brought the machines here. We were just fine before you came along. Metal bitch," Ryan sat down on the ground, adrenaline seeping from his system.

"I need help to find John," Cameron said blankly, doubting Ryan would be willing or even able to help, but still trying, regardless.

"Fuck you and fuck Connor," Ryan snapped. "You two brought all this on us," Ryan gestured at the destroyed airport around them. "We were just fine before you came along."

Cameron was about to reply when the drone of a Predator UAV buzzed overhead, probably running a damage assessment after their attack on the airport and making sure everyone was dead. There was no way it didn't see them; Cameron needed to move.

The sound of the drone flying low overhead sent Ryan into another panicked rant and he started raging at Cameron, John, the machines, everyone.

"He said they'd leave us alone if I gave him Connor," Ryan muttered under his breath as he moved back towards the Stryker, hoping to hide in the cover of the armoured vehicle once more, and unaware that Cameron heard every word he'd said. "Fucking machines... all liars... he said they'd leave us alone!"

Cameron's mind processed his words and she suddenly realised exactly why Cromartie had ambushed their ambush, why he'd been so effective, and how he'd known  _exactly_  where John was.

"You betrayed John," Cameron said as she pulled Ryan away from the armoured vehicle, a hint of venom in her voice that she didn't try to hide. Ryan had given their position away to Cromartie; he'd likely been the one who switched all their thermite rounds for standard hollow points. He was responsible for John's disappearance and the deaths of his men.

A cold anger took hold of Cameron and she punched Ryan in the chest. She could have punched through his chest with ease but she held back, part of her wanting Ryan to suffer. She suppressed a grin as she felt his sternum crack under the impact of her fist and he fell to the ground, coughing up blood and crying out in pain. Ryan grabbed for his gun, got a grip round the handle as Cameron picked him up by his jacket and threw him into the side of the Stryker. She heard something of Ryan's snap as he hit the armoured vehicle and his head bounced violently.

"Fuck you!" Ryan screamed out as he pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger repeatedly. Half the shots missed, a few hit her head and did nothing but gouge small holes in her face. She ignored the pain signals she got that added to the already long list of damages she had sustained. Ryan was a traitor; a threat to John, but in single combat he was no threat. Cameron snapped out her hand and closed it around Ryan's good hand, the one holding the gun, and squeezed, clamping his hand down on the pistol grip while her other hand wrapped round the barrel and snapped the gun in half. She stared into Ryan's eyes and saw the fear inside him; he trembled as she made her own eyes glow bright blue. Part of her was enjoying his fear. He'd tried to have John killed and a slow death was what he deserved.

She lashed out and kicked him in the gut, sending him tumbling end over end and landing in a heap, twenty feet in front of her. She limped forwards towards him, not fast enough to catch Ryan as he picked himself up off the ground and made a dash to get away from her. With the damage to her leg, he was faster than her and could get away.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you, bitch." Ryan called out as he ran away. "Join Connor in hell!" He'd get to Area 51 and bring back a whole company to take her out; make Swiss cheese out of her with thermite rounds and blow her head off and use it as a paperweight. Oh, that machine would rue the day it had crossed Lieutenant Colonel David Samuel Ryan.

Cameron still had the barrel of the pistol in her hand. She threw it at Ryan as he retreated and watched him fall to the ground, arms flailing, as the broken weapon struck the back of his head. She knew he was only stunned momentarily; she'd not thrown it hard enough to kill him. She wanted him to die slowly.

He'd just started stirring when she got within arms reach and she pulled him upright by the neck, fingers closing like a vice around his throat, cutting off his air. She watched, seemingly impassive but really seething inside as Ryan kicked and thrashed desperately, trying to break her grip. His eyes bulged in their sockets and the veins in his temples throbbed and stood out as his face turned red, then blue, from asphyxiation.

 _"P...please,"_ Ryan coughed out, begging for mercy as his eyes rolled up toward the back of his head. A memory flashed up in her mind, of Mexico when Cromartie had followed John and Riley there, back when he was sixteen, after Cromartie had escaped their ambush in the church in Dejalo, and they'd made their way back north to the US; a turtle on its back that she'd turned over, and something she'd said to John once.  _We're not built to be cruel._

She loosened her grip on his neck and threw him, hard, onto the ground. He lay on his back, wheezing, not moving, barely conscious. Cameron turned him over onto his front so he wouldn't swallow his tongue, and then turned away. Ryan was no longer a threat to anyone but himself, and there was nothing left for her here. Wherever John was, there was no one here who could or would help her to find him.

"You should leave," she told him as she turned away. "They'll be back."

Cameron decided to head for Area 51, hoping the men there wouldn't have the same reaction as Ryan had. She'd only been tolerated after they'd found out what she was because of John, so it was likely they wouldn't help her. But she had to try. They had vehicles, manpower, and aircraft that could fly low and search for him, assuming he was still somewhere in Las Vegas. At the very least she could gain access to the stored Terminator endoskeletons and salvage parts to repair herself with and make her search for John slightly easier.

It would take days for her to reach Area 51 on foot, and it was likely that Skynet had dispatched units to return to the airport, after the Predator had flown overhead and undoubtedly seen her and Ryan. She'd never get far before more machines appeared, and she was no match for them in her current condition. She searched the Stryker that Ryan had been hiding in and found it was fully fuelled, and apart from being battered, it was in reasonable shape.

Cameron staggered towards the rear hatch when she felt a sharp bite on her back, followed a split second later by the  _crack_  of gunfire. She turned back around to see Ryan prone on the ground, propped up on one elbow and another smoking pistol in his hand, a demented grin on his face. He pulled the trigger again and again as he laughed and raved hysterically. Cameron simply stared at him, ignoring the shots, until his gun clicked empty and he stared at the weapon in confusion. She briefly wondered if she was wrong in sparing him; perhaps she should...

 _No,_  she thought. She would spare him; she was better than him. She pulled the rear hatch shut and moved to the driver's seat at the front.

She started the engine and pulled away, leaving Ryan to his fate. Cameron drove the battered but sturdy eight wheeled armoured personnel carrier north, out of the city and into the desert that looked as untouched as it had before Judgement Day. She preferred the desert; it was simpler, there was much less cover, but also fewer places for any threats to conceal themselves in.

She drove at a steady forty miles an hour through the desert, towards the research base. She didn't try to contact the base on her radio in case they decided they didn't want her there and prepared for her arrival. Once she was there, she'd persuade the base commander – through force, if necessary, to devote all his resources into locating John.

"I'm coming for you, John," she said quietly, even though there was nobody to hear her.

_I'm coming for you._

* * *

_He had been spared by the machine, even as his futile efforts to kill her betrayed her mercy, demanding resolve through a bullet in his head. Now, even as he laughed a torrid laugh that echoed across the remains of North Las Vegas, so stood before him the heartless steel of another machine intelligence that had no such mercy; an entire army of unfeeling intelligences, sent to enact judgement on those who had yet to be judged._

_And he looked up with wide, wild eyes. Not frightened but frenetic, insanity and laughter consumed his mind, to behold the machine that shadowed his puny, worthless, backstabbing form._

_Thereupon Lieutenant Colonel David Samuel Ryan laughed for the last time, before he was cut off by a blade of silence – a burst of 7.62mm embedded in his lungs, forever silencing him._

_And as he lay dying, the silence failing to displace his madness, a T-70, a naked demon of steel; and borne of the image of skeletal death bore over his quivering, silenced form. Even in his dying state he laughed somehow, the silence punctuated his dying, laughing gasps._

_At that, the T-70's foot rose above his face and fell again, crushing his skull underfoot and ending his treacherous existence._


	2. Welcome to Century, Mr Connor

_"METAL BITCH!" Sarah Connor yelled out in pain as Cameron poked and probed at her wounds – already bleeding profusely – with various instruments, cold metal touched ragged flesh and Sarah bellowed out again in agony._

_The Connor kitchen was a scene of barely contained chaos and muffled screams of pain pierced the air. Sarah lay on the kitchen table, bleeding profusely from the gunshots Cromartie had inflicted on her. She'd covered their retreat from another hellish battle with the cyborg and been shot in the back by the machine as she'd turned to get into their jeep and escape._

_"Where the hell's Derek?" John growled. Derek had gone to Charlie Dixon's house to enlist his help as soon as they'd lost Cromartie. He'd been gone for over half an hour and they'd heard nothing since._

_"This will help," Cameron held out a scrunched up towel and passed it to Sarah, who placed it into her mouth and bit down hard, muffling her cries of pain as Cameron resumed trying to treat her wounds. More blood poured out onto the table and her cries were suddenly cut off into silence as Sarah's eyes rolled to the back of her head._

_"Mom..." John leaned over, pushing Cameron to the side roughly. Cameron grabbed Sarah's wrist and scanned for a pulse... nothing._

_"She's lost too much blood," Cameron said blankly as she put down the surgical tools she'd been using a moment ago in a valiant but vain effort to save Sarah Connor's life. Cameron – like all Terminators – had detailed files on human anatomy; extensive enough to make effective killing machines for Skynet, and equally as effective in treating wounds for the resistance. Countless human lives had been saved by reprogrammed cyborgs in the human camps – though many professed they'd rather die than be saved by metal._

_"NO!" John snapped harshly at Cameron, tears rolling down his face as he turned to face her. He couldn't lose her; all his life he'd been used to moving, being torn away from everything and everyone he'd been attached to. The single constant in his life – barring three years at Pescadero – had been his mother. He had nothing without her, was naked without her. She'd trained him for years but he couldn't do this without her; she, Cameron, and Derek had said he'd grown a lot in the last couple of years, but he still felt like a little kid; still needed his mom as much as ever._ "Dosomething!"

_"We don't have a defibrillator; the chances of reviving Sarah without one are less than..."_

_"I don't care!" John snapped back at Cameron, his anger melting away into helplessness. "Please, Cameron."_

_Cameron looked at John's pleading eyes; she felt uncomfortable seeing him upset or angry, especially with her; although she wasn't sure why. She pushed John aside and turned back to John's mother. Cameron placed one of her hands on top of the other, just above Sarah's breastbone, and pressed down repeatedly on her chest, careful to not exert too much pressure and break her ribs._

_"John, form a seal around Sarah's lips and breathe into her mouth," Cameron instructed. John knew why she was telling him to do it; she could mimic the actions of breathing she had no lungs and couldn't exhale. Cameron pushed down on Sarah's still chest five times then instructed John to breathe into Sarah's mouth. John pushed aside the oddness of performing mouth to mouth on his own mother and complied. He'd do whatever it took to save her. He'd given blood to save his uncle; he'd give anything,_ everything, _to save his mother._

_"Stop," Cameron commanded, pulling him back as she resumed her chest compressions. They carried on, Cameron pressing down on her chest for what seemed like an eternity, to no avail. Cameron stopped her chest compressions and stepped away from Sarah. John looked at her in horror._

_"What are you doing?" John stared angrily at her. "She's dying!"_

_"Her heart stopped ten minutes ago," Cameron replied. "She's dead, John."_

_"No!" John glared at her before turning back to his mother. He desperately pushed down on her chest, breathed into her mouth, and returned to her chest, becoming more frenzied in his actions, unwilling to accept she was gone._

_Cameron pulled John away from Sarah. "She's gone," she said evenly. John's face turned red and he felt the tears forming in the corner of his eyes, but they refused to spill. He felt an overwhelming sense of anger at Cromartie, at Derek, at himself, and at Cameron. She'd stopped helping; she hadn't cared about her at all; only him, and only then because she was programmed to, because he was her mission._

_"You let her die," John said coldly as he glared at her, his eyes brimming with accusation and hate. He didn't see that Cameron had tried for ten minutes to save Sarah; he just saw the_ machine _that let her bleed to death, possibly even on purpose if she saw Sarah as a threat or hindrance to her mission. He stormed past, deliberately shoving her away with his shoulder as he made his way to his room._

_Cameron said nothing in reply. She knew his action was a sign of contempt but didn't understand John's anger towards her; she'd tried to help Sarah Connor because John had asked her but she'd known that it was useless; Sarah had lost too much blood and she'd been unable to stabilise her. She felt an irritable sensation whenever John was angry at her – which was often – and this time she felt it more acutely than ever before._

_"John..." she started, as John spun round to face her, cold fury and hatred burning in his emerald green eyes. Cameron made no response to his actions and just stood there, passively._

_"I don't want to hear it, Cameron," he said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "Mom and Derek were right; you're_ just _a_ machine."

_He saw Cameron's blank features fall slightly; her eyes looked away from him and the corners of her mouth dropped a fraction of a centimetre. But he didn't care; it was all a ploy. None of it was real, just a trick to manipulate him; he saw that now. Cameron opened her mouth to reply but John couldn't make out the words; her voice was drowned out by white noise – a high pitched, deafening mechanical roar filled his ears and grew louder and more intense._

_Fire erupted from nowhere and engulfed them; searing Cameron's flesh and burning half her face clean off her skull, one glowing blue eye stared at him with an expression of hurt and something akin to unrequited love. He saw the metal spike through her chest as she fell to her knees, her eyes still locked on to his, almost pleading._

_He couldn't hear her above the white noise as she spoke again, but he knew exactly what she said._

_"John..."_

"Cameron!" John's head shot up as he woke up. He sighed in relief at not seeing Cameron's obliterated form in front of him; it was just a dream. And then he remembered what had happened; the HK that fired on her and the T-2 drone, seeing the explosion blossom outwards like a malicious flower and encompass her. That part had been all too real.

He winced at the memory of the things he'd said to Cameron back then. He'd been a complete dick to her for most of the time he'd known her, even for the last few days, when he'd claimed to love her. Why the hell she loved him, he'd never know. He kept thinking of her deathly still form after the missile attack, and the metal protruding from her chest. Had it hit her power cell? Could she have survived such damage? It wasn't lost on him that a human would never have stood a chance; another reason he was glad Cameron was a cyborg. Still, he wasn't sure even  _she_  could have survived. She hadn't moved, hadn't rebooted. Perhaps she couldn't, he thought. Perhaps she was still there, offline, deactivated, in a state of living death? She needed him, and he wasn't there for her.

He snapped himself out of his reverie; Cameron needed him, but if he was going to be any help to her he had to put any emotions aside and concentrate purely on getting the hell out of here – wherever  _here_  was. He pushed down all thoughts of Cameron and focused on everything around him.

The white noise he'd dreamt was also real, John realised as he became more aware of his surroundings; a high pitched drone all around him that rattled his bones to the core. He tried to stand up but something pulled taut on his arms and stopped him halfway, so he was half stood, half crouched, and hunched over; he looked down and realised his hands were chained together, and another link of chain ran from his hands to the floor beneath him, preventing him from moving more than a few inches. He noticed something else in the dim light; people. Nearly two dozen other occupants were chained up along with him, slumped on benches that ran the length of the small, cramped, room, to either side, and shackled to the floor. He felt a slight forward momentum, which along with the droning white noise told John that wherever he was, he was in transit.

"Where are we?" John asked aloud, receiving no reply in return.

John ignored his cellmates for now, all of whom seemed to be unconscious, and swivelled his head around, searching for any clue as to where he was, and for any way out. He'd not noticed it at first but there was a dim light pouring in through a slight gap in end of the room, about a foot away to his left. It looked to John like it could be some sort of door or hatch; some kind of way out. His best chance to escape was in transit, he knew. The later he left it, the less likely he'd be able to get away, and this looked to be his best chance. If he could open the door and somehow get free of his chains, he could get out.

He tried to move closer but again his chains stopped him and he pulled up short. His feet weren't shackled, however, and he twisted his body so his feet were facing the hatch and kicked hard. It budged slightly, revealing more light, but didn't open. John kicked out again and again, lashing out as hard as he could until the bottom hatch buckled and then fell partway open.

Wind tore at John's face as he half stood, half crouched – as much as his shackles would allow him, and looked out. He suddenly realised what the white noise was; engines. He was in an aircraft of some kind, flying low over the Mojave Desert; endless stretches of barren rock and sparse patches of scrub zipped by underneath them and John wondered where the hell they were going. "So much for that plan," John mumbled, slumping back down into his seat in resignation. He'd hoped they'd be on road, at least, so he could jump out the back; there was no way he could survive a drop from this height or this speed.

"Hey, got any water?" A croaking voice asked from behind. John turned round to see another man now awake, slumped on the bench that ran the length of what John figured must be a passenger area of whatever aircraft they were in; in his forties at least, and balding. His clothes – once casual jeans and t-shirt - were tattered and torn and his face was unwashed and covered in cuts and scratches.

"Sorry," John shook his head. "How'd you get here?"

"Same as you, probably," the man answered. "Machines found me - those two legged bastards with the guns on their arms – dragged me out and stunned me in some kind of net."

"You fight back?" John asked.

 _"Fight back?"_ The man laughed humourlessly. "You don't fight back against these things, kid. You run and hide, and if they catch you... well, I guess we'll find out soon enough." The man noticed the DPM fatigues John was wearing and figured the kid was military, probably cut off from his unit. He'd heard about the Las Vegas Resistance, but had stayed well clear of them; a large group of well armed soldiers was nothing more than an all you can eat buffet for Skynet's monster machines. No, he'd hidden away with a handful of others and hoped the machines would ignore them, having bigger fish to fry.

"What's your name?" John asked him.

"Sean Clemens," the man answered. "I'd shake your hand but we're a little tied up here," he rattled his chains for emphasis. "You?"

"John Connor."

"Ha!" Clemens laughed bitterly. "Whatever, kid. You've got an imagination on you; I'll give you that." John pulled on his uniform to show Clemens the name 'Connor' stencilled on his uniform. "Okay, maybe you're  _a_ Connor, it's a common name; but you're not  _the_  Connor, kid. John Connor's got himself an army up in Carson City; they're the ones that led that big offensive a few days back; fat lot of good  _that_ did, if you ask me. I was doing okay before that; a few patrols once a day or so, easy to hide from; then the machines showed up in force and here I am now. Anyway, even Connor couldn't help us out of this stinking mess."

"Carson City?" John asked, confused. He'd never been to Carson City before in his life; since Judgement Day he'd been living in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs for several months before that, and LA for four years before that.

"Yeah, Carson City," Clemens replied, as other people started to stir in their seats. "Let's keep your little 'I'm John Connor' thing between us, okay?" he winked at John condescendingly, as if talking to a child. John stared out the back in silence and ignored the comment; he was used to it by now.

It wasn't long until John saw the ruins of a city beneath them; a vast jungle of twisted, burnt out metal and concrete, the remnants of once tall, proud monuments to human infrastructure, now little more than rubble. They flew over miles of devastated landscape, and John saw the destruction taper off as they flew onwards. John tried to think of where they were; Nevada, still? California? Maybe even Utah, or New Mexico?

The aircraft slowed over a group of relatively intact buildings, and came to a standstill, hovering in place, before slowly descending straight down. The other prisoners inside the aircraft all awoke with a start as the aircraft touched down on the ground. They whispered and murmured among themselves, all scared and confused. John ignored them and kept his eyes on the hatch, which opened suddenly and light burst into the aircraft, silhouetting a pair of bulky T-70s as they entered the aircraft – occasionally scraping their heads against the ceiling – and tore the chains off each wall.

Both machines marched out of the rear compartment and pulled on the chains, roughly dragging the humans off the benches and onto the ground. The pulled again, dragging them forward once again. John struggled to his feet as quickly as he could, knowing what the machines would do to any who resisted. Though he'd been trained to resist and fight back, he knew he had no chance of fighting back and surviving, and his best chance now was to appear compliant.

They were marched out of the aircraft – a V-22 Osprey, John noticed, probably adapted for unmanned flight - and into an open area. John saw tall wire fences lined with razor wire angled inwards at the top. All around, John saw people toiling and lamenting, carrying heavy loads back and forth between buildings, under the watchful eyes of more T-70 units. Even more were herded together like cattle in a separate enclosure at the far end of the camp. John immediately knew what was going on;  _work camp._ He remembered enough from Derek's description to recognise what the place was. The air smelt of chemicals and the acrid stench of burning meat – and John doubted it came from hot dogs. The one thing that was out of place was the buildings at the far end; the tallest structures in sight, with a battered looking sign that read  _'Century City Hospital.'_

That made no sense to John; Derek had told him that the camp Kyle and his future self had been imprisoned in had been located at the Century Mall.  _Why would Skynet build a concentration camp next to a hospital?_

Before he could dwell on it any further the T-70s lined them up and stood guard opposite them, ready to react and keep the humans in line. A third machine approached, slightly different from the others, John noticed. It was a T-70 but it had two hands, instead of a mini-gun on one wrist. Cameron had never told him about a machine like this.

This new machine inspected them all, grabbed each prisoner's arms, tore off the shackles, and then held a device over the inside of their right arms. Several of those cried out in fear and pain when it was their turn. John felt a sense of dread as the machine got closer to him. He wished Cameron was there with him; somehow just her being around made him less afraid, more able to cope. He wondered how his future self coped without her.

As it approached, Clemens – standing next to John – elbowed him in the side.

"Kid, when that thing takes our cuffs off, get ready to run," he muttered under his breath."That fence, over there," he nodded his head towards the nearest section of wire fence.

"Don't," John hissed, looking at the spot Clemens was indicating, and then back at the machine releasing the restraints, only three people away from him now. Clemens was crazy if he thought he could make it; it was only thirty feet away but with the machines standing guard the other side of that fence might as well have been on the moon.

"It's ten, twelve feet high at most; we can make it over that and we're home free," Clemens whispered in reply. John simply shook his head no, and hoped Clemens got the message.

When it stood in front of John, he held as still as he could and made no move to resist as the machine held out his arm with one hand, and ran the device over his wrist with the other. John gritted his teeth and hissed in pain as he felt his skin on fire where the device touched, and he tried in vain to pull his arm away. The machine was just too strong, however. It seemed to go on forever until the T-70 pulled the device away and the pain subsided. John clutched at his wrist and looked at what the machine had done to him. On the inside of his wrist was a barcode, just like Derek's. He'd been labelled, branded, whatever. It made him feel sick; they were little more than cattle to the machines. Even though he knew that would be the case; actually experiencing it firsthand was enough to turn his stomach.

Clemens was next to him, next in line to be scanned. Like John, he said nothing and stood stock still, grimacing and grunting in pain as the machine burnt a barcode into his arm. For a moment, John held out hope that Clemens had listened to him as the machine branded him as well. His hope soon faded. As the machine moved on to the next man, Clemens shot forwards and bolted for the perimeter fence. The other prisoners in the line loudly hollered and cheered him on, urging him forward as he ran as fast as he could for the fence. John remained silent, knowing what would come.

Clemens was fast for his age, much faster than John expected him to be; he made it to the fence faster than John probably could have, and quickly started scaling the fence. John forced himself to watch as the pair of T-70s - who strangely just watched for a moment, as if curious – raised their gun arms and fired a long burst at Clemens as he made it halfway up the fence. Even as the rounds hit, Clemens held on to the wire fencing as if it were a lifeline, as if simply holding on would preserve his life. The rounds tore through him and even from a distance John could see blood and bits of flesh fountain up from the impacts as the sustained fire literally tore Clemens to pieces. Clemens fell to the ground, dead; most of him, at least. One dismembered hand still clung to the fence, as if even in death, Clemens refused to give up.

The others in the line stared in horror at the shredded meat that was once a man, and looked back at the machines responsible in fear and grim realisation. John felt it, too. Whether or not the machines had intended it, they'd made Clemens a perfect example of what would happen to those that tried to escape or resist in any way. What horrified John more was that the prisoners already in the camp had barely even blinked as Clemens was diced by the machine gun fire. They'd simply ignored it and carried on working; he couldn't fathom what horrors they'd endured that would have numbed them to that.

As if it had never happened, the machines turned back to branding the remaining prisoners and then herded them into two groups; everyone who looked old, injured, or weak, was forced to the enclosure at the far end of the camp, leaving John and six others where they were. John guessed the machines brought people here for orderly disposal, kept the strongest alive as slave labour – likely worked them to death, and killed those who were deemed too old or sick to be any use. John wondered which group actually had it worse.

John and the others were marched through the camp and John saw what any of the prisoners were hauling human bodies. It hadn't been obvious from a distance, but as John passed a group of prisoner/slaves, he saw they pushed hospital carts piled with corpses from one building towards a large, conical structure with smoke spewing from the top.  _A furnace,_  he realised. They were loading bodies for disposal, just as his father – Kyle – had told his mom. All the prisoners from the Osprey who'd been forced into the other enclosure, along with the hundreds of people already there, all awaited the same fate; to be executed and then burnt down into dust. And they knew. John could see their grim, hollow faces on the other side of the fence that split the camp in half. They knew what was happening and they'd already lost hope and resigned themselves to their fate.

The lead T-70 unit – the one with two hands, rather than a gun arm – pointed at the prisoners loading and pushing carts, and in a tinny, strained, metallic voice, spoke a single word:  _"work."_ The other's paused, unwilling to go near the bodies, but simultaneously afraid of being executed like Clemens. John seized the initiative and marched towards a large cart full of bodies, and started pushing, heaving the heavy cart and following the line of similar carts towards the furnace. The others quickly understood and started pushing other carts, following John's example.

An evil, vile, foul stench invaded John's nostrils as he pushed the cart. He recognised the smell; he'd smelt it once before; his first mission to Fort Carson – the hundreds of dead soldiers who'd littered the base. It had been bad enough then from afar; up close as he was now, it was a hundred times worse. Bile rose in his throat and he felt nauseous, but carried on pushing. John couldn't avoid looking at the bodies in the cart he was pushing. There were seven or eight of them at least, piled onto the cart as if they were merely trash to be taken out for collection. They were all pale, nearly blue, in some cases, and their faces were all twisted into fearful, agonising expressions.

However Skynet killed them, it wasn't quick and looked far from painless. One of the dead in John's cart was no more than a toddler – a little girl. Her eyes had bulged and face was a grim mask of pain, confusion, and terror. A teddy bear was still clutched tightly in her hands. The poor kid probably had no idea what was going on, even at the very end. He couldn't avoid it anymore; the sight and smell of so much death was too much for him to handle, and John threw up, violently ejecting the contents of his stomach out onto the ground below. He caught sight of a machine watching him, and struggled on. If he stopped he'd be killed. He threw up again and again; on the ground, on his clothes, on the cart, everywhere - but kept pushing; he didn't stop heaving the cart even as his stomach emptied itself and John was left retching thin air. The searing, burning pain in his stomach, throat, and now his head, was tremendous, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and just black out, but knew he'd never be afforded that luxury. He had to keep going.

He struggled with the heavy cart but finally made it to the furnace, where other prisoners hauled the bodies out of the cart and casually tossed them inside, piling them up like sandbags. John glared at them for their indifference but then realised they'd likely been doing this for weeks, if not longer, and had likely just become numb to it all. Would that happen to him, he wondered.  _Will I just shut it all out, stop caring about it all? Is that what happened to Future Me?_

John felt utterly and completely hopeless as he turned the now empty cart around and pushed it back towards where he'd started. As he pushed the cart he saw yet another grizzly sight; Clemens' head, severed from his body, was placed on a spike at the top of the perimeter fence, facing into the camp. His dead gaze, eyes still open – as was his mouth- pierced into John's soul and he felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Clemens' head wasn't the only one ornamenting the camp's perimeter; John counted fourteen heads along just one stretch of fence. The message was clear; that was the fate of anyone who tried to escape or fight back.

John felt an overwhelming sense of dread, of hopelessness, creep in. He was supposed to be  _the_  John Connor, the guy who stormed the wire of the camps and smashed the machines into junk, yet there was nothing he could do; the machines owned the camp, they watched every move they made, and John had already seen how they dealt with those that didn't comply.  _How the hell can I possibly stand against that?_ He lamented.

He sorely wished Cameron was with him, not only because he missed her already, nor because she'd annihilate these tin cans without effort, but because she somehow gave him the strength to fight. She always seemed to have faith in him, even when he didn't believe in himself. Faith wasn't part of her programming, she'd once said. That wasn't Skynet's doing, or his future self; it was all her. When he fought, he fought for her; so they could one day have a normal life together. He'd still clung on to that hope, even though it would take years, even decades, for it to come to fruition.

Though now John wondered if she was even still alive, if he'd ever see her again. He'd been captured; he was stuck in the camp, there was no escaping. His future and that of everyone else had been made very clear to him; they'd work and toil, disposing of bodies, until they were too weak to work any more; at which point they'd be thrown in with the other prisoners awaiting execution. That was his fate now. He'd failed everyone, Cameron, his mom, Derek, the resistance. Utterly and completely, he'd failed them all.


	3. Quid Pro Quo, Part One

The Nevada Desert was an ocean of calm within the storm of Skynet's extermination campaign. Even after the fallout from the nuclear warhead that had destroyed Las Vegas and most of its half million or so residents, the desert still looked practically identical to how it had done before. Barring the total lack of heat that would have normally been present in the middle of August – replaced by a murky greyness resulting from billions of tonnes of dust and rock caught in the atmosphere from the explosions – there was very little difference between the pre and post Judgement Day Nevada Desert. The barren, rocky expanse of desert stretched on and on, seemingly without end and all but devoid of any signs of life. The scenery could easily be mistaken for a lunar landscape, it was so deathly still.

The isolated silence was broken only by a single vehicle blazing a trail across the rocky terrain and throwing up dust, shards of rock, and other particulates into the air as it surged forwards.

Cameron drove the battered Stryker in a straight line through the desert, focussed with a typical Terminator single-mindedness on reaching her destination. North Las Vegas had been destroyed by Skynet and there were no other resistance units around with the exception of the men and materiel John had ordered to Area 51.

Cameron didn't have much in the way of a plan; she needed spare parts from the endoskeletons in the base's underground lab complex and she needed vehicles and manpower to help her search for John. They had men, vehicles, and aircraft; they could organise a search and find either John or some clue as to where he was.

Cameron didn't think John was still in Las Vegas anymore; he wouldn't have just left her whilst she was offline. He also wasn't killed by the machines that had attacked them, at least, not straight away; she'd searched the immediate area en route to the airport and if John had been run down and killed by them she'd have found a body close to where she'd rebooted. He'd either escaped them and was still in hiding or on the run, or he'd been captured. In which case he could be anywhere; Cameron had no knowledge of Skynet installations in Nevada apart from Area 51 and Nellis air base.

A small dot in the distance caught Cameron's attention and she drove towards it. The dot got bigger as it and the Stryker simultaneously approached each other, until it was close enough that Cameron could see it was a Humvee speeding straight towards her. The Humvee swerved broadside to face Cameron and screeched to a stop, a soldier manning an M-19 grenade launcher mounted on the roof swung the weapon around at the Stryker as three more men burst from the car and pointed weapons at the front of the personnel carrier. The M4s the men had were no threat to her inside the Stryker; its armour could shrug off their rounds like they were rainwater, but the M-19 was a different matter; it would make short work of her battered APC, and her along with it. The men held their fire but the message was clear:  _get out._

Cameron switched off the engine and opened the rear hatch. She picked up her own M4 and held it loosely as she stepped outside and approached them, still limping badly on her damaged leg. The men stared at her with mild hostility as she approached.

"What the hell do _you_ want?" The lead soldier sighed, irritated, as he approached, his gun pointed in her direction but not quite aimed at her. He'd been hoping to see people; not a  _thing._

"John's missing, North Las Vegas is gone. I need to find John," Cameron replied.

"We know about Vegas," he snapped. "What we  _don't_ know is how Skynet found them; how do we know  _you_  didn't betray them to the machines?"

"You don't know, but I didn't," Cameron answered. "I need to find John," she insisted.

"So go  _find_  him," another of the men retorted.

"I need assistance," Cameron said. She didn't trust any of the men from Las Vegas, but she needed manpower to help her search; more people searching for John increased the chances of her finding him. "Please," she added, dropping her rifle to the floor to show she meant no harm. Without it, she had little chance to defend herself from the armed trio before her, and more importantly, the fourth soldier manning the M-19 aimed right at her, if they decided to open fire, but it was a calculated risk she had to take.

The lead soldier hesitated, unsure of what to do. He decided he didn't want to be the one who brought a machine to the base, but if it was genuine then Connor needed their help. He wasn't going to make that call however, and decided someone higher up could take the rap for that if anything went wrong.

"Patrol Delta Four to base Zero Alpha, come in," he pressed on his radio.

_"Zero Alpha to Delta Four, go ahead."_

"We've got Connor's metal here; Connor's missing and she's asking for help." He immediately cursed himself for saying  _'her'_ rather than  _'it;'_  the exposed gleaming metal showing through the large gash its face belied the machine's true nature. There was a pregnant silence over the airwaves, during which the lead soldier stared at Cameron. She in turn stared blankly back at him. She had no backup plan if this failed; she couldn't survive a single hit from the M-19 launcher and even if she somehow survived and got away she'd still be damaged and alone in her search for John.

 _"Delta Four, disarm it and bring it back to base, out."_  Cameron's face remained unchanged but inside she felt a sense of relief – or what she believed to be relief; she was glad they'd accepted her request.

"Back in the Stryker, tin can," the lead soldier spat, gesturing towards the personnel carrier with the barrel of his rifle. "You know the way; just remember we've got the grenade launcher trained on you, so don't try anything.

"And leave the rifle there," he said as Cameron leaned over to pick up her weapon. Cameron preferred to have the rifle with her, but she'd remain passive for now. She'd give in to whatever demands they made; unlike humans she felt no sense of pride. She'd do whatever it took to render their assistance.

Cameron got back into the Stryker and started the engine up. She rolled forwards and the Humvee followed behind; close enough to be in easy weapons range, but far enough away that if Cameron tried anything, they wouldn't be in any immediate danger and would have time to react.

The two vehicle convoy rolled on for a little over an hour until they crested the same hill from where John had launched his assault to capture Area 51, and headed down the slope towards the perimeter wire of the base. Cameron saw as she eased the Stryker to a standstill that two Bradley armoured fighting vehicles had their chain guns trained on her, and a man approached the personnel carrier, flanked by two soldiers in full combat gear and each brandishing an M-240 machine gun. Cameron exited the Stryker and limped towards the man – identified by his uniform as Major Scott; Ryan's adjutant and second in command. The four men from the Humvee all got out of their vehicle as well and stood ready with their weapons. They followed closely as Cameron hobbled up to the Major.

Major Scott stepped closer to Cameron and looked her up and down, took in the visible damage she'd sustained, and sneered slightly, clearly unimpressed and very unhappy to see her.

"I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to show your face here," he spat out in contempt. "So much for 'artificial intelligence;' kill it," he ordered the two men with machine guns as he turned away. The two men shouldered their weapons and pulled on their triggers as Cameron sprung forward on her good leg and grabbed one of the guns by the barrel, shoving it back with enough force that the butt cracked into the gunner's shoulder, instantly dislocating the joint. He dropped the weapon and screamed; Cameron pushed the barrel up with lightning speed and smacked the man in the face with it, knocking him to the ground unconscious.

The second man fired a burst into Cameron, the 7.62mm rounds tore through her face and neck and she ignored the hot, biting sensation as each bullet struck her and gouged chunks out of her flesh as she threw the gun at his helmeted head. Even with the Kevlar helmet covering his skull, the force of the blow was enough to send him sprawling to the ground. The four men who'd brought her in raised their rifles but hesitated; she was too close to the Major to open fire without hitting him as well, the same was true of the Bradley's chain guns. She limped towards Scott and shoved him against a Humvee with enough force to shatter the window glass.

"John's missing; I came for help," Cameron said; her voice and face both blank but Scott could sense an air about her; he didn't think it was possible for a robot to have feelings but it was clear to him the machine was  _royally_ pissed. Cameron had asked for help, had come to Area 51 for help finding John, and they tried to destroy her. She didn't know where John was, but wherever he was, he needed her. She had to find him and protect him: she  _needed_  to; she needed  _him._

Cameron had nothing to exist for without John; not only her mission but her best and only friend, and the only person she cared about; the one who taught her things and helped her understand her growing emotions – emotions that might not even exist without him. Without him she was nothing, a machine, dead. John had told her he felt the same way, which meant that without her John wouldn't survive; not  _her_ John. If John were to physically survive without her he would still be alone and would become like Future John; the John she loved would be dead. Killing her was the same as killing John, she realised. She wouldn't allow that to happen; she picked up and M240 machine gun from one of the unconscious soldiers on the ground and aimed at Major Scott's chest.

"You'll help me find John," Cameron insisted, flashing her eyes blue to emphasise her point; if he didn't help her then he was useless to her.

Major Scott grinned, impressed with the machine after that little display. Even damaged, he saw Cameron was more than a match for the men he'd assembled. Unarmed as it was, it would never have stood up to a full squad assault in her condition, but still had a lot of fight in it; enough to suit his needs. And it seemed willing to do whatever it took to find Connor; he could use that to his advantage.

"We can come to... an arrangement," he said to her, the fear on his face disappeared and was replaced by a smug grin. "Stand down," he ordered his men, who looked disappointed they wouldn't get the chance to blow her away.

"What kind of arrangement?" Cameron asked.

"I'll help you find Connor if you help me with something first."

"You help me find John first," Cameron insisted, holding the barrel of the machine gun inches from his head. Scott's confident smile remained.

"That's  _not_  how it works," he shook his head, smirking as he lazily brushed the barrel away from his face. "Quid pro quo, tin can; if I help you I want something in return."

"What do you want?" Cameron asked after a moment's hesitation, unsure of the man's intentions. She dropped the machine gun to the ground and stepped back; she wouldn't be able to coerce him into helping and couldn't kill him without the other soldiers attacking her, and he knew it. Any such threats would be ineffective; he had the advantage, she'd have to comply. She was willing to do whatever he demanded if it meant finding John. Scott walked towards the research building where they'd found the HK and the endoskeleton, gesturing Cameron to follow.

"Connor was right about one thing; Skynet wants this place back," Scott answered, his demeanour toward Cameron switched like a light; changing from openly hostile to conversational. "There's been Predators flying overhead ever since we took the base and we've already been attacked once.

"There's no damage," Cameron replied. She'd seen none of the signs of battle that had been obvious in the decimated airport. Nothing beyond what had happened when they'd captured the base, at least. If Skynet had attacked them she thought there would be more damage; human bodies, damaged buildings, destroyed drones and armoured vehicles. There were none.

"It was only a stinging attack," Scott answered. "A handful of T-1s and a pair of HKs, we took them out easily enough."

Cameron was confused; from what Ryan had told them, Nellis air base contained a factory and produced their own machines. Skynet could have deployed dozens of units against them and destroyed them outright.

"It was testing our firepower; counting our guns," Scott continued as they walked inside and down the stairs towards the basement lab complex. She found the stairs difficult with the damage to her knee, and nearly lost her balance a few times on the way down. She ignored the grating of the damaged knee joint and the pain signals that surged through her neural net processor.

"They know what we've got now," he said as they entered the lab. "But they  _don't_ know about  _this,"_ he pointed to the HK plasma cannon she'd used to shoot the Aurora, back on it's pedestal, sans the glass display case she'd shattered before. "And they don't know we've got _you."_  Cameron thought it strange that she was unwanted minutes ago, but now he was treating her like she was the key to defending Area 51. Also that he was so interested in a non functional plasma weapon.

"It doesn't work, it's broken," Cameron told him. Not quite true, it was only depleted, but he didn't know that.

"Machines break and they can be fixed," Scott replied, looking straight at her as he spoke. His implication wasn't lost on Cameron. She, like the cannon, was broken. And like the cannon, she could be repaired. "If you can fix it," Scott continued. "And use it to give us an edge in battle - maybe even build a few more – then I'll devote all our resources to get Connor back."

"Why?"

"'Why' what?" Scott asked.

"Why are you helping me?"

"Because it's in both our interests," Scott chuckled. "Believe me, I'm putting my people first here. So do we have a deal or not?" he asked coldly, crossing his arms and waiting for an answer.

Cameron knew she had no choice; without his help the odds of her finding John were negligible, and if she refused it was likely he would assemble men to destroy her.

"Deal," Cameron replied, holding out her hand as she'd seen humans do countless times before. Scott snorted dismissively at her outstretched hand, turned around to leave Cameron alone in the lab. He wasn't above making a deal with her but he didn't want to spend any more time around the freaky machine than absolutely necessary, and he certainly didn't want to touch it. Connor might like its company all day long, but he was clearly the only one. Before he left, Cameron told him she needed a medical kit; he shrugged his shoulders, unsure why she needed it, but said he'd have one sent down to her when he had the time.

Cameron hefted the plasma cannon over her shoulder and limped into the main lab. She found shelves of tools already in the lab – likely used by the researchers employed by the Air Force before Judgement Day, and moved over to the endoskeletons in the glass display cases. With single punch she shattered the glass and stepped closer to the inert machines and performed a cursory inspection. They were battered and torn apart; in very bad shape for the most part. Cameron grabbed various precision tools from their racks and pulled off armour plates, twisted joints out of place, and removed pistons and servos.

In a little under an hour Cameron had the three T-900s completely disassembled in pieces on the floor and ready for inspection. She scanned over the pieces and searched for the components she needed: breast and dorsal plates, pistons and servos for her knee, and most importantly, a replacement for her aortic power conduit. Between the three disassembled machines she found very few useful parts; six dorsal plates, two breast plates, two intact knee servos, and one functional power cell. Four out of the six dorsal plates were too twisted and battered to be any use – their structural integrity compromised worse than her current armour plating - and the two remaining were too large; the same for the breast plates. This would have been easier if it had been T-888 models she was using instead of the 900 series; T-888s came in different sizes and their parts were more compatible with her frame.

Worst of all was that none of the aortic power conduits were in working condition; they'd all been too damaged to use, so she was stuck with her leaking conduit. The single T-900 power cell was incompatible with her systems, but she wasn't planning to use the power cell for herself; she had other plans for that.

Cameron took the parts in the best condition and placed them down at a workstation. The scientists and technicians had attempted to rebuild the HK and the terminators several times between 1947 and 2011, and had a large array of precision tools for working with metal, including a laser cutter and an arc welder. Cameron smiled slightly; it was perfect for what she needed. She placed the breast plate under the cutter and switched on the laser, opting for manual rather than computer control – which in her case was essentially the same thing.

The breast plate was too large and wrongly proportioned for Cameron to switch the part with her own and she'd have to melt down the breast plates completely and re-cut them in order for them to fit, a process that would take hours, if not longer. Cameron wasn't willing to wait that long before starting to search for John again, so instead she cut a half-centimetre thick, ten-centimetre by ten-centimetre square that she could weld over the breast plate. John or Derek would have called it a stopgap measure, she thought.

It hurt her to think of John, yet that was all she could do. Her mind was never fully occupied; she could process thoughts so fast, and so many at the same time, that a portion of her mind was always focussed on John. She wanted him back. She felt an overwhelming sadness as she worked; she didn't even know if he was still alive, if she'd ever see him again. She'd search as long as it took until she either found him or her power cell ran out. She hoped it was the former; without John she felt incomplete, broken.

With all the parts she could use laid in front of her, Cameron sat down on a chair, pulled her boots off and undid her belt, sliding off her trousers. Then she took off her combat jacket, t-shirt, and bra. Naked but for her underwear – a pair she knew John liked - she examined the damage to her skin: she saw the jagged hole in her chest – just above her right breast - where the metal had impaled her and barely missed her power cell. Three centimetres long and half a centimetre wide; it was large enough to be an immediate concern, and the structural damage to the rest of the breast plate was compromised to the point that she was vulnerable – a burst from a T-1's guns could punch through the weakened armour and shred her power cell. She could change it out, but the similar wound on the dorsal plate was impossible to repair on her own. She didn't trust anyone in Area 51 to help repair her, only John; he always helped repair her even when she didn't need his assistance. It was nice to have help; especially from John.

Cameron took out the switchblade she always carried on her and cut a straight line across the top of her chest; from her armpit to the centre of her chest. Then another incision downwards, between her breasts, and a made a third cut running parallel to that one, down from just below her armpit to just underneath her right breast; framing the entire right side of her chest on three sides with a bloody red line.

Cameron dug her fingers into the line at the top and pulled, peeling the flesh away from her endoskeleton downwards and letting it hang like a flap, exposing the gleaming, bloodstained coltan breastplate below. The pain of the knife cutting through her skin was nothing, she felt it but she didn't have the same response as humans had – it was simply to alert her to the damage, and didn't force her to flinch or move in any way that humans did automatically in self preservation and to limit their injuries. The physical pain didn't bother Cameron; what hurt her most was looking down at the damaged coltan plating underneath, and being unsure what John would think if he saw it. He professed to love her, just as she loved him, but Cameron had noticed John flinch and look away every time she'd sustained damage and a portion of her metal endoskeleton was exposed.

She thought he likely still pretended to himself she was human, and when she was damaged he saw the real her, and didn't like it. She would ask him directly when she found him. She had to repair herself first, however.

Cameron held the square of coltan she'd cut from one of the T-900s and turned on the arc welder, moving the white hot tip of the tool slowly around the where edges of the cut square touched her breastplate. Given the heat resistant nature of her coltan endoskeleton, it took several minutes for the metal to give, eventually starting to melt under the intense heat and the melting portions of the square and breastplate flowed together, bonding tightly. Cameron continued, ignoring the more significant pain signals being sent to her chip from the high heat damage being sustained. She had to do this or she'd be even more vulnerable to damage later.

Eventually, after almost an hour of continuous work, she'd effectively welded the square over the hole in her breastplate, covering up the damage like a giant metal band aid. It wasn't as good as replacing the entire breastplate, and the welded on section would protrude under her skin, but it was enough to stop any well placed shots from penetrating her armour. Satisfied, and once the metal had cooled enough, she carefully pulled the flap of flesh back up over the joint, but it flopped back down again with nothing to hold it in place.

She was disturbed from continuing her repairs as a soldier entered the room carrying the med kit she'd asked for almost two hours ago.

"Hey, tin can, the Major wants to know how long until the plasma cannon's... holy shit!" the trooper dropped the med kit to the floor and instinctively reached for his sidearm as he saw the bloody, metallic mess of Cameron's chest. All the soldiers on the base were originally from North Las Vegas, and all knew what she was; few had actually seen the exposed coltan, and none on this level. "What the hell?"

"I'm a scary robot," Cameron replied; she didn't care what he thought of her, most humans – future and present – despised her. She cared nothing for any of them either; only John. Sensing the soldier's fear and revulsion, she moved closer to him, noted his increased respiration and perspiration, his dilated pupils, and the barely contained expression of fear in the soldier's face as she approached.

"W...what are you doing?" he asked nervously as Cameron came closer to him, he froze in fear, unable to move apart from a constant nervous trembling. If Cameron were a human commander she would have sighed in frustration. Humans like these weren't useful to the resistance – not in combat. She'd seen many like him in the future - tunnel rats, mostly; they didn't last long.

"You should go, you shouldn't stay here," she told him. He was hyperventilating as she stopped just short of him and deliberately flashed her eyes blue. The soldier's fear finally overcame him and he fainted, falling to the ground in an undignified heap.

 _Good,_ Cameron thought, now she could continue undisturbed. She took the medical kit and left the unconscious soldier where he lay. Taking out a needle and thread, she quickly stitched the loose flap of her chest back up then wrapped bandages around her chest – not to protect against infection; Skynet had designed Terminators' skin to be immune to bacterial and viral infection – but to hold the flesh in place until it fully healed. Once she'd bandaged her chest up she put her bra back on to further hold her chest in place. It would take a little over two days for skin to fully heal up.

With her breast plate repaired as best as she could, she focussed her attention on the damage to her knee. She picked up the switchblade again and cut a wide circle around her knee. As a machine, Cameron had almost endless patience, but she felt an urge to work faster, to repair herself as quickly as possible; the faster she repaired herself and fulfilled her part of the deal with Major Scott, the faster she could find John.

* * *

"Tin can, you done yet?" Major Scott's voice rang out as he entered the main lab. He'd left her for hours now and had heard nothing from either her or the two men he'd placed to guard the lab, and decided to check on the machine's progress himself. The room looked like a bomb had hit it; the HK and endoskeletons had been torn apart and lay in pieces on the floor. The machine – Cameron – was stood with her back to him, working on something he couldn't see. A few feet away, on the ground, was Private Walker, the young trooper he'd sent to supply the machine with a medical kit. He was unconscious on the floor, his hands and feet bound together and medical tape over his mouth.

"What the hell's going on?" he demanded, fingering his holstered sidearm, ready to use it – not that it would do much good against her. Cameron stopped her work and turned round to face him.

"He fainted," Cameron gestured her head towards Private Walker's prone, unconscious form. "I restrained him." She'd tied him up shortly after he'd fainted so that when he came to he wouldn't disturb her work. She concluded he wasn't very strong, as he'd still not regained consciousness.

Suspicious, Major Scott kneeled down and checked the young soldier's vitals. He was alive, and seemed unharmed. Major Scott had been there when Cameron had taken out the T-70 in Area 51, had seen her rip its head off with ease, and figured if she'd attacked the private there would be very little left of him. He gave her the benefit of the doubt for now; he still needed her for now. Once she'd served her purpose he'd see about melting her into scrap.

"It's been almost four hours," he said, irritated. "Is the plasma cannon ready?"

"Yes," Cameron turned back to the workstation and picked up a long silvery device, covered in numerous dents, burn marks, and welding scars. It was shorter than it was previously, and slimmer; a stripped down, butt ugly version of its former self.

Once Cameron had finished her chest and tied up Private Walker, she'd cut open her knee and replaced the servos with those of the T-900. They, like the breastplate, were too big and didn't fit properly, but she'd managed to alter them to fit well enough to work, and then stitched up her knee in a similar manner to her chest, and covered that in bandages to hold the self inflicted wound together and allow it to heal. Then she'd started work on the plasma cannon.

The weapon itself worked when she'd used it, but the power source had been depleted. She'd taken the weapon apart and integrated the surviving T-900 power cell inside the cannon, replacing it in the depleted power source's place and removing the external wires, placing them all inside the cannon's casing. She'd then stripped down the weapon to make it smaller and lighter; the HK plasma cannon was large, heavy, and bulky; never intended as an infantry weapon – Skynet had built phased plasma rifles for its army of endoskeletons and infiltrators - and even though she could easily carry it, she'd decided to make it easier to wield by removing a lot of parts she deemed unnecessary. She'd gutted the weapon, stripping it of several internal parts, and using the laser cutter to reduce the barrel length and to cut several parts down to size.

The end result was a semiautomatic phased plasma cannon; one hundred and eighteen centimetres long and forty pounds in weight – one third smaller and lighter than the original weapon Cameron had used against the Aurora. It could now be used by a very strong human, though she had no intention of allowing any human to fire it; this weapon was for her alone to terminate whatever machines Skynet had between herself and John.

She aimed the cannon at the pile of machine parts on the floor and pulled the trigger three times. Three blinding, blue-white flashes flared in rapid succession, forcing Scott to look away shield his eyes with his hands, as three bolts of condensed, superheated plasma tore from the weapon in less than a fraction of a second and smashed into the pile of spare parts, boiling the metal away on impact and melting the surrounding parts into a warped, unrecognisable pile of half-molten slag. She turned back to Major Scott, the weapon pointed at the floor.

"Good," Scott replied, genuinely impressed. "And are  _you_  ready?" he asked.

"I repaired myself," Cameron answered simply as she walked towards him, displaying the weapon. She still limped badly from her knee, caused by the mismatching servos in the joint, but it wouldn't break and render her immobile, like her original parts would have likely done. "I couldn't fully repair all of..."

"Doesn't matter," Scott answered, not really giving a crap about her condition beyond her combat capabilities. "Can you fight?"

Cameron had performed a diagnostic check once she'd completed all the repairs she could on her own. Her power cell was still draining, unable to repair the ruptured and leaking aortic conduit; her right dorsal plate was still damaged and vulnerable to small arms fire, she'd have to avoid being shot in the back; and her knee's mobility was still compromised, but better than before. Her operational effectiveness had risen from thirty-four to sixty-nine percent. Far from full capacity but Cameron deemed it would be enough; there was nothing else she could do from here and finding John took priority over her condition. He was her only priority.

"Yes, I can fight," she replied.

"Good, because there's been a change of plan; you're going to Nellis tonight."

"We had a deal," Cameron said; her hand twitching as it sometimes did when she felt angry – something she and John had never been able to solve after the car bomb incident; and she barely managed to override an unconscious  _'terminate'_  command. He'd gone back on his deal to help her find John, she thought.

"And it still stands," Scott shot back. "Where do you think Connor is?"

"I don't know," Cameron answered, not getting what he was driving at; if she'd known where John was she would have gone after him alone. She didn't trust Major Scott; she couldn't explain why but she simply didn't, but she needed him and his men to find John.

"He's in Nellis," Scott sighed, his patience with the machine wearing thin. "Skynet's taking prisoners now; our F-16 pilots saw some kind of POW camp inside Nellis on a recon flyby; if Connor's alive he'll be there."

"You knew where John was, why didn't you tell me?" Cameron asked, feeling angrier that she'd been lied to; he knew where John was – or likely was – and could have already sent men on a rescue mission.

"What, and have you repair yourself and then piss off to find Connor, leaving us to the wolves? I don't think so," Scott chuckled. "Like I said before, 'quid pro quo;' I help you, you help me. Connor's in Nellis and that's our biggest threat; I'll get you in, you take down their defences with the plasma cannon and locate Connor, and I'll send everything we've got to support you once you find him. We get Connor back  _and_ Nellis taken care of; two birds with one stone."

Cameron took a moment to process Scott's words. She'd been curious why he was helping her, sensing he was hiding something. She hadn't trusted him, she still didn't trust him, but his goal was the same as hers, and Nellis air base was a major Skynet installation; even in the future, Future John had regarded the Skynet airbase as a major threat. She would comply with Major Scott, for now. She nodded her head slowly in agreement.

"Good," he grinned. "Because you're going in tonight."


	4. Quid Pro Quo, Part Two

Cameron stared in silence in the passenger seat of the Humvee, staring out the windscreen into the darkness as the light armoured car drove slowly through the ruins of Nevada. To the casual observer it would appear that Cameron was daydreaming, miles away, in her own little world, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Cameron was scanning the surrounding environment for threats with her infrared night vision. The closer they got to Nellis the more patrols they'd encounter. So far they'd only encountered a single air patrol, a Reaper UCAV, but Cameron had heard it before it had come into range and they'd shut the engine off and hidden, still as statues, in the surrounding rubble.

Being a cyborg, the task of scanning for threats took up very little of her processing power. The two soldiers in the Humvee – one in the driving seat next to her and one manning the .50 cal heavy machine gun mounted on the roof – hadn't spoken a word to her since they'd set off, and she'd made no attempts to make conversation, and she found her thoughts turning once again to John.

Simply thinking of John and what he would be suffering in the camp hurt Cameron; she felt as if a vital part of her was missing, despite her diagnostic program assuring her otherwise she couldn't rid herself of that feeling. But at the same time, she couldn't – and didn't want to – stop thinking about John, as though her thoughts and memories of him were a lifeline she clung to, and to stop thinking of him would sever that line and he'd be lost to her. He was the centre of her existence and his absence made her uncomfortable, made her hurt; she didn't know if he was safe, if he was hurt or not, and because she understood he felt the same about her; he would have seen her damaged by the Hunter-Killer missile attack and likely wouldn't know her condition, the same as her. She'd been severely damaged and it would be reasonable for him to assume she was dead.

 _Dead,_  she'd never considered her own termination as death before. Humans died, machines were deactivated or destroyed; they weren't alive so they couldn't die, but she found  _'dead'_ more fitting. Cameron instantly squelched that line of thought; it hurt her to think of 'John' and 'dead' at the same time, and she wouldn't accept it unless she saw it with her own eyes. And if he was, she didn't know what would happen to her; whether she would continue to remain online – or alive, as John would have put it – completely alone and no mission or purpose, or would she simply shut down?

Once again she had to consciously stop that line of thought – another thing that was happening more frequently – and she focused on how to help John. She'd brought food, water, and a medical kit with her in case he was injured. She didn't know what the conditions of Skynet work camps in this time were like, but she thought it likely they'd be comparable to those of 2027, and didn't want John to have to endure it for any length of time.

As they drove towards the Skynet stronghold that was Nellis air force base, Cameron noticed all of her systems running faster than normal; her thought processes had sped up exponentially and gave her the sensation that time had slowed down. She knew that wasn't possible, but it was still irritating for her – it meant it would feel even longer before she saw John again, and with very little to occupy her mind, all she could do was keep scanning outside and try to suppress that feeling – something that was becoming more difficult as time went by.

She was simultaneously thinking of John and searching for threats – one of the advantages of being a cyborg was that she could multitask like no human ever could and keep her mind actively engaged in several tasks at once. Her audio sensors – much more sensitive than human ears, detected a faint whining sound in the air and it took a hundredth of a second for her to match it to a sound profile in her files and recognise what it was;  _HK._

 _"Stop,"_  Cameron commanded the driver, who slammed on the brakes and brought the Humvee to a standstill. "Turn the engine off," she said quietly, turning to the nervous looking soldier behind the wheel.

"What is it?" he asked; the fear in his eyes apparent, and for once not because of her.

"HK, two miles east," Cameron replied. "Drive up to that ridge," Cameron pointed to a rocky outcrop sticking out of the desert floor, fifty metres away, that would provide partial cover from being seen. The soldier started up the car again and slowly drove forward, pulling up alongside the rocks that jutted out at an angle, keeping them hidden from anything watching above.

"Where is it?" The second soldier in the Humvee asked from his position manning the .50 cal machine gun on the roof. He had night vision goggles on but still couldn't see anything. Cameron held on to her plasma cannon, tucked in the foot well between her legs and sticking out up to her chest, but she didn't turn it on.

"I got it," the gunner said as the HK emerged from the low clouds above and descended to a few hundred feet, flying in a search pattern.

"Don't fire," Cameron said flatly. Even if he shot the machine down it would alert Skynet to their presence. She could destroy it with a single shot from her plasma cannon but the loss of contact with the UCAV would compel Skynet to send more units to investigate. Unless it discovered them she would let it pass over and wait until it was out of range before they carried on.

"I can nail it right now, tin can," the gunner whispered harshly.

"More would come," Cameron replied. "And we'll be discovered."

"Just wait, Gus," the driver said, unexpectedly agreeing with Cameron. The two men and one cyborg waited in silence for several tense minutes that seemed to drag on forever as the UCAV flew overhead – straight over them – and carried on, flying west.

"You can drive now," Cameron said to the driver, satisfied that the HK had flown out of range to detect them.

"I don't think so," the driver chuckled humourlessly. "End of the line, tin can. You're walking the rest of the way."

"We're seven miles from Nellis air base," Cameron replied. She could walk the seven miles to the base but even with the repairs to her knee, she still limped on it and it would take longer to get there.

"We're safe here but there's nothing between us and Nellis but open desert; another of your buddies flies over and we're humped."

Cameron ignored the comment and looked blankly at the soldier. She thought about forcing him to drive her closer, but he did have a point, she knew. She would take longer on foot to reach the base, but she could evade detection easier on her own and without the noisy, bulky Humvee. She held the plasma cannon by the carrying handle she'd attached and picked up a pack full of food, water, medical supplies, and ammunition and grenades for an M4A1/203 rifle that was also strapped to the back of the back – in case the plasma cannon malfunctioned.

She opened the door and stepped out, slinging the pack over her shoulders and hefting the plasma cannon with ease.

"Once you've found Connor and taken out the base defences, get out of there and meet us here; we'll pick you up in twenty four hours," the driver said, pulling the door closed and pulling off, turning around and driving back across the desert towards Area 51.

Cameron was alone once more, though this time she preferred it that way. Humans tended to be unreliable; they were slower, weaker, and were prone to throwing away logic – or common sense, as John called it – and acting on emotion. They did stupid things; even John was guilty of that, she knew. She herself had started to act on emotion, she knew. She'd felt angry when fighting Cromartie – more than anger, she'd felt rage; she'd been unable to control it during her fight and it had gotten the better of her. She couldn't allow it to happen again; it nearly cost John his life then and might be worse next time, yet she couldn't go back to feeling nothing.

Cameron marched for two hours across the open desert towards the Skynet owned former air force base. There was little to no cover and on four separate occasions Cameron had to hit the ground and lie still as HKs and Predators flew overhead in what she assumed to be combat air patrols, sweeping the area surrounding the base for any threats. She knew she was close when the last two aircraft flew overhead within ten minutes of each other.

Eventually the perimeter wire of the base came into sight and Cameron saw the sprawling base within. She kept far away from the fence and crept around slowly, moving from cover to cover and taking care to move silently, still searching for any sign she'd been detected. The base was huge; the size of a large town at least, and it took Cameron a while before she found what she was looking for; a dark, empty corner of the base perimeter with no machines nearby. She knelt down and hid behind an abandoned car on the dirt road winding around the back of the base, a hundred and fifty feet from the perimeter fence, and remained still as a statue, waiting, watching the perimeter from under the car.

She heard it before she saw it; the  _crunch_  of heavy tracks rolling over the rocky desert floor just outside the perimeter as the behemoth form of a T-2 rolled forwards, parallel to the fence, its upper body turning out to the left, facing away out away from the base, swivelling its massive 30mm auto-cannons in her direction. Cameron remained still and low to the ground, knowing if she moved even an inch she'd be blasted apart in an instant. Designed to punch through tank armour, its heavy armour piercing rounds would shatter her endoskeleton; she wouldn't survive even a single hit.

Cameron watched the massive armoured tank killer roll past her, unaware of her presence, and remained still even after it had gone. She waited, still kneeling in place until she heard the rumbling sound of another T-2 drone, exactly two and a half minutes after the first. Again, she watched it go past her position, oblivious to her hidden behind the car. She waited until a third machine rolled past, a hundred and sixty seconds later. She calculated the T-2 patrols were staggered approximately every two and a half minutes – that was her window to get into the base.

Cameron ran up to the fence – still limping slightly on her damaged knee - and knelt down just outside the wire, still listening intently for any approaching machines. She put her plasma cannon down on the rocky ground beside her and gripped the crisscrossing wire mesh and pulled, tearing a hole through the fence. To Cameron, the sound of the wire snapping was as loud as the crack of a bullet. She would have heard it from a hundred yards away, but the entire base was active; aircraft taking off and landing, service drones rolling along on fat rubber wheels to refuel, rearm, and repair the unmanned bombers, the distant whining of various machines and the rolling of armoured tracks as machines patrolled the perimeter.

Cameron quickly pulled the flap of fence away, pushing the plasma cannon and her pack through first, then crawling under and pulling the flap back into place, leaving hardly a trace of her presence. Two minutes and ten seconds had elapsed, she noted. She could already hear another T-2 approaching as she stood up inside the fence, moved towards the cover of the nearest building, and slipped inside, unseen.

The building, which she instantly identified as having been living quarters for the base's enlisted personnel, was in complete darkness. Skynet had no need for human accommodation once its machines had killed all the personnel, and had rerouted the power elsewhere. Cameron could easily see in the dark, however, and walked along the silent, deserted corridors, and up several flights of stairs to the fourth – and top - floor.

Cameron felt something she'd never experienced before; her urge to immediately search for John conflicted with the more logical reasoning that she should try to familiarise herself with her surroundings rather than searching blindly and risk being discovered. Logic won out – barely – and Cameron remained inside. She left her pack and plasma cannon in the main corridor that linked all the barrack rooms together; the weapon was too bulky to carry from room to room, and instead carried her M4 carbine in case she came across anything hostile.

Quickly and methodically, Cameron searched from room to room, making sure they were clear and also looking out each room's window, taking in the view outside. Major Scott hadn't been able to give her any useful information regarding the layout of the base; only that it was 'a fortress' according to him. It took a long time – there were eighty four rooms on the top floor and she had to clear them all – but eventually she managed to paint a picture of the base's layout.

She saw, from searching every room and getting a 360 degree view from the windows, that the eastern side of the base – where she was, held all the living quarters and mess halls. Completely disused now that the base was fully unmanned; Skynet would likely tear the buildings down or repurpose them when it needed the space as it's machine army grew. At the centre of the base held two runways running east to west, and fourteen large hangars beside them on their right, spaced apart in two rows of seven; each looked as if it could house up to thirty aircraft. Beyond that was the control tower and radar equipment – all fully automated and controlled by a central Skynet computer. If she destroyed that, it would cripple the whole base and the machines would have no command or control. Though she filed that away for later consideration; rescuing John was her top priority.

She couldn't see anything resembling a work camp, but her view of the base was fairly limited, and she'd need to take a closer look around the base to find him.

One thing she took note of was some of the rooms looked like they'd recently been lived in, and not by the soldiers who'd formerly occupied the rooms; she saw empty packets of food scattered around several rooms, plus empty and half full ammunition boxes, hexamine cookers, a pack of playing cards sprawled out on the ground, a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels and three ceramic mugs, a pair of smoked cigarettes, stubbed out onto a desk, and an AK47 leaning against a wall. Cameron was curious; had either major Scott or lieutenant colonel Ryan sent men to the base? It was unlikely; all the men From North Las Vegas seemed afraid of Nellis air base and had done their best to avoid it, and she knew from her time in Cheyenne Mountain that most professional soldiers kept their quarters neat and tidy; though most of the men under Ryan's command had been army reservists, not as well trained as John's soldiers. It was possible another group of humans managed to infiltrate the base.

Suppressing her curiosity, Cameron decided that she'd have to recon the base to find out where John was; she'd found out all she could from looking out of windows and would have to explore the base herself to find him. She strapped the carbine to her pack and slung it over her back, then picked up the plasma cannon and headed back down the stairs and out the same door she entered, leaving no more trace of her presence than if the barracks had been visited by a ghost.

Cameron silently darted from one barrack room to another; hiding in the shadows and moving quickly but awkwardly, limping on her right leg. It was uncomfortable, but less so than before and it only slowed her pace slightly. She gradually made her way away from the living quarters and towards the hangar complex. This was the most dangerous part, Cameron knew; the space between the living quarters and the hangars was flat open ground with very little cover, and she saw several T-1s and T-70s rolling and marching throughout the base, patrolling and searching for any humans that might have slipped past the perimeter patrols.  _Or humans who might try to escape,_  Cameron thought.

Slowly but surely, Cameron made her way towards the hangars, the  _thrum_  of generators and heavy machinery became louder as she got closer, mixed in with an electric buzzing and the loud, high pitched whining of jet engines close by. Cameron walked along the outside of the nearest hangar, keeping close to the wall for cover, and peeked inside.

Inside the hangar were three huge machines, spanning from floor to ceiling and running the length of the hangar – which itself was the size of a football field. Cameron entered the hangar; her plasma cannon shouldered and held at the ready as she moved inside to take a closer look. She walked around the inside of the hangar, scanning for any signs of humans. The active machinery made it more difficult; numerous robotic arms, conveyor belts, and other moving parts interfered with her tracking. She took her time and searched carefully among the giant machines, finding no trace of anyone being there.

She looked at the machines and instantly recognised their designs: HK production units; they were cruder and smaller than they'd been in 2027, but they performed the same function. The whole hangar was an HK factory, and the other hangars likely performed similar functions. On top of each machine was the fuselage of a partially constructed HK drone, being tended to by robotic arms that attached and secured parts onto the airframes. Cameron watched as the nearest construction unit started to attach a pair of barrel shaped vectored thrust engines onto the short, stubby wings on the side of the machine.

Cameron put down her plasma cannon and opened up her pack, taking out a block of C4 and sticking it underneath the middle unit. If she found John it would be best to have a distraction to aid their escape from the base.

She searched all the other hangars and found three more factories; two more creating HK aircraft, and another assembling T-2s, and T-70s. The remaining hangars contained both unmanned and conventional aircraft; the skeletal remains of numerous F/A-22 Raptors, stripped down and torn apart for materials and parts for the HKs that Skynet seemed to favour over other human designed UCAVs.

Cameron planted more C4 charges in the factories; not enough to destroy all of them, but enough to halt Skynet's machine production in Nellis and provide cover for her to escape if she needed it. What Cameron didn't find, after an extensive search of all hangars, was any sign of human prisoners or slaves. There was no sign that any humans had set foot on the base since Judgement Day, barring the equipment left in the living quarters, which was clearly not from men who were prisoners of Skynet. Something was very wrong, she realised; no one was there at all, either Major Scott was wrong, or he'd been lying, or Skynet had disposed of its human prisoners, in which case...

Cameron whirled around, sensing movement behind her, and peered out the hangar entrance, scanning left and right. She saw a flicker of grey and a trailing shadow disappear inside the hangar in front and to her right. She played back what she'd seen, zooming in and enhancing the image in her mind's eye; the back and legs of a grey figure disappearing into the hangar's back entrance. Cameron stared at the empty spot where the figure had been; confused that the grey she'd seen wasn't the dull gunmetal grey of a machine, but a light, greenish grey material; combat trousers tucked into gleaming, polished black boots.

T-70s didn't wear clothes, and the figure was far too small to be a combat unit, which meant the figure was either a human or a T-888. If it was a Terminator, she'd have to destroy it; if human, he or she was likely one of those who'd been living in the quarters she'd been in, and she should know what they were up to, and if they knew anything about where John might be. Cameron quickly crossed the unlit space between hangars and walked over to the back entrance, intent on finding out who this human was and what they were doing.

A burst of fire struck Cameron in the side of the head like a heavyweight's punch would do to a human. She felt the impact before she heard the shots as the rounds shredded her right cheek and temple, bouncing off her hard coltan skull. Cameron snapped her head to the side and saw the lumbering, mechanical frame of a T-70, thirty feet to her right.

She didn't know why she'd not spotted it, or why she'd not cleared the area before she followed her new target; she'd followed it with single minded purpose, not even thinking about clearing the way first. It didn't matter now, she realised, her threat warning alarm flashing in her head and identifying the machine as a  _'moderate threat'._  Cameron pushed herself to her feet in an instant and brought the plasma rifle to bear and fired as the T-70 lined up its gun arm for another shot.

A brilliant, piercing blue-white beam tore from the cannon and struck its chest, boiling through the armoured chassis and causing the armoured chest plates around the impact to melt and run like treacle. The plasma bolt pierced all the way through the machine and shattered the primitive, heavily armoured power pack, exploding in a brilliant flash that blew the machine apart from the waist up; the legs fell backwards and clattered on the ground. Cameron's threat warning alarm still flared; the immediate threat of the T-70 gone, but she knew she'd been discovered.

Within seconds HK aircraft took to the air, shining their search lights on the ground and searching for her as ground units rolled forward to defend the base. Cameron ran as fast as she could away from the scene, but she'd already been spotted; a T-2 rolled around the corner and swivelled its heavy cannons at her, intent on obliterating her. She fired her weapon first; the high heat plasma beam blew the top of the machine apart and its guns fell still, but more machines were behind it and approaching fast. Cameron fired a volley of shots at the machines – shattering their frames with the powerful plasma weapon -and ran as fast as she could towards cover. There was no way she could sneak out of here now; she'd have to fight her way out.

Cameron fought a running battle out from the hangar complex and alongside the runway, firing shot after shot at HKs ascending into the air, burning them down to the ground in blinding blue plasma fire before they could get airborne to engage. She sprinted back towards the old living quarters, dodging and weaving to throw off incoming fire as she made her way back towards where she'd cut the wire fence to get in. She needed to get out of the base; if she stayed in the base she'd be forced to back into a corner and defend her position, and she'd inevitably be overrun and destroyed.

As Cameron ran forward, another T-2 rolled round from a building in front of her and turned its guns towards her. She skidded to the floor, narrowly avoiding its opening salvo of antitank rounds that shattered the wall next to her and pelted her with bricks, and fired another brilliant plasma beam, burning her opponent down as if it were nothing. The T-2s were the most heavily armoured and toughest of all Skynet's current machines; designed to destroy main battle tanks and built to withstand multiple hits from RPGs and most modern antitank weapons, but the plasma cannon cut through its thick armour like a red hot knife through butter.

Cameron had the advantage of superior firepower but she was alone and outnumbered, and as she ran past the flaming, half melted wreck of the T-2 she'd just destroyed, she ran into a pair of T-70s, and to their left was another approaching T-2, and another closing in behind that one. She turned back and tried to find another way, but quickly realised she was being boxed in; T-2s were approaching from nearly every angle and rapidly blowing away her cover with their huge cannons, trying to pin her down while the smaller units – T-1s and T-70s – closed in to finish her off.

Cameron looked over all the approaching units and scanned for a hole in their defences. She spotted an alleyway, eighty metres away between the commissary and what she guessed was a recreation building, defended by only a pair of T-70s. She accessed her memories of the base from when she'd looked out every window in the top floor of the enlisted quarters and saw that alleyway ended only forty metres from another section of the perimeter fence. That was her best chance. She felt no fear for herself – she'd learned that self preservation was entirely a human instinct – but she'd prefer to remain online, and without her, John would remain alone and lost.

She ran forward at a pace that would put an Olympic sprinter to shame, dodging and weaving to throw off the machines' targeting systems, and ignored the hundreds of near misses – and the few smaller calibre rounds that hit her - as the surrounding machines opened up with a murderous amount of fire.  _Fifty metres left._  Cameron fired the cannon from the hip as she ran, blasting apart the T-70s between her and the alleyway with twin shots.  _Forty metres..._

Cameron heard – rather than saw – the HK in the air behind her, hovering high behind her, and felt an unpleasant chill through her at the memory of the last HK that had attacked her. She dug her heels into the ground and stopped running as a missile erupted from under the HK's stubby wing and streaked towards her, exploding where Cameron would have been if she'd kept moving; another near miss, but the concussion from the blast slammed into her and threw her backwards into the air. Cameron felt weightless and disoriented as she hurtled through the air; brief images, memories of the day before, flashed unconsciously before her eyes.

_"Stay here," Cameron pushed John low to the ground, pulled him into a quick kiss and moved to the edge of cover, waiting for the drone to approach. The machine had sensed their heat and was closing in to investigate, emerged from the edge of their cover and swivelled its guns to track them. Cameron leapt on top of the machine and kicked the left gun with all she had, bending the barrel in the middle._

_The right cannon turned to fire on John as Cameron wrapped her hands on the barrel and heaved upwards with everything she had, wrenching the cannon away from John as it fired into the air, unleashing a volley of 30mm shells that would have torn John apart. Simply the thought of John dying caused her pain all over. She could hear more machines approaching as she struggled to disable the T2._

_"Run," Cameron pleaded as she punched and kicked at the machine, glad that for once John actually ran when told to. She'd hit something critical on the machine, and the gun kept firing in a single continuous burst, apparently unable to stop. She had to hold the chain gun pointing upwards to keep it from targeting John, but at the same time, more machines were approaching, and she couldn't hold the T-2 drone off and defend John from the others at the same time; she was struck with indecision, not knowing whether to let go or hold on, which was the bigger threat to John._

_The HK that buzzed overhead hovered in the air like a giant silver wasp and fired at her and the T-2. Cameron saw the missile's rocket motor ignite before launch and threw herself from the UGV. Despite her quick machine reflexes she could never outrun a missile. She tried to escape it anyway and watched as the rocket blasted towards her; she was in midair when the armour piercing rocket struck the T-2, erupting in a brilliant flash of roiling flame that consumed her..._

Cameron lay dazed on the ground as she tried to reorient herself. Pain and damage reports flooded her consciousness and she realised she couldn't move. She ran a diagnostic check and realised her damaged aortic conduit had been torn further out of place by either the explosion or the impact with the ground. To Cameron, the cause of the damage was immaterial, only the consequences mattered; she was paralysed. Cameron started to consciously command her power cell to further increase output, when she saw more machines approaching; T-2s and T-70s approached from all angles and several HK's hovered nearby, their weapons all trained on her prone, immobile form; she was trapped, no way out. Any move Cameron made now would result in her termination. Cameron could do nothing but watch as they circled her, preparing to finish her off.  _I'm sorry John, I failed._

Cameron watched as the machines kept their weapons levelled at her but held fire. She didn't understand; she was damaged, unable to move any part of her, and completely vulnerable, but they remained still. It took a moment for her to understand; Terminators didn't exist yet – barring herself and any others sent back from the future – and the machines thought she was human. She wasn't moving and didn't show any signs of life, so they didn't fire. She still gave off a heat signature from her power cell and her organic covering: Cameron decided to try and trick them; if they thought she was dead they'd lose interest; dead humans were no threat to Skynet – usually. She once again thought of John, and Sarah; officially dead since 1999, but they'd fought Skynet every single day since they'd jumped forward. She refocused her thoughts to the present and stopped trying to reroute further power from her fuel cell and instead  _reduced_ its output, then she stopped the flow of artificial blood through the capillaries in her skin, and thought of John as she powered down into standby mode.

* * *

Awareness came back to Cameron as she reawakened from standby, and as her CPU ran a full diagnostic, Cameron checked around her, slowly moving her head from left to right, making sure there were no machines nearby. Nothing, she was alone. Not only that, she realised, but she could move again; her power cell had compensated for the further damage to her aortic conduit and automatically boosted its power output when she'd rebooted from standby.

It was lighter outside, she realised; it had been the middle of the night and the sky had been pitch black when she'd searched the hangars and been discovered, and now the sky was twilight; the sun either slowly rising or setting; it was more difficult to tell with the sun mostly blocked out by the dust thrown into the atmosphere from Judgement Day. She checked her internal clock to see how long she'd been out for. _August 7_ _th_ _, 2011, 21:44:13;_ she'd been out for almost a whole day, likely a result of the damage to her power systems. She'd have to avoid engaging standby mode again, she realised; there was a chance that next time she'd fail to reboot at all.

Cameron sat up – sensing no machines in proximity – and immediately realised where all the base personnel had gone; she was sat upon a pile of uniformed, bullet riddled, half rotten corpses; hundreds of them, all slaughtered on Judgement Day so that Skynet could control the airbase unchallenged and use it to dominate much of Nevada. A human would have been disgusted, would have been ill, at the sight and smell of so much death and decay, but it meant nothing to Cameron; just bones and meat.

John had taught Cameron much about the value of human life over the years; she knew humans were afraid of death and tried to preserve their own lives as much as possible, and people tended to mourn for the dead, even if they didn't know them. She remembered John being upset at the death of Jordan Cowen on their first day of high school. She understood the grief humans felt towards the dead, but she didn't share it. Unless they meant something to her, it didn't matter. If John died she didn't know what would happen to her, whether she'd simply shut down, or become catatonic and remain in place, reliving her perfect memories of her time with John until her power cell failed or she was destroyed; or whether she would simply carry on, hollow and empty, without purpose, until her power ran out and she faded away.

Others; like Derek, James Ellison, Charlie Dixon, and Lieutenant Davenport; she'd be saddened slightly at their deaths, but would sacrifice any or all of them without hesitation to protect John. Most of the humans she'd met, she would remain indifferent at their deaths; she didn't know them, she felt no emotional bond with them like she did John, so they meant nothing to her.

Cameron climbed down the small hill of decaying bodies and quickly located the plasma cannon, unceremoniously dumped along with the bodies, along with the weapons the human soldiers had died using. She didn't need to inspect it to see the cannon was useless; the barrel was bent out of shape and long crack ran down one side of the weapon's casing, a mess of broken wires protruding from within. Cameron didn't dwell on how it had happened, instead she inspected the pack – still slung to her back, and found the carbine intact, plus the C4 detonator, spare ammunition, radio, and food and water she'd packed for John. She held out the detonator and her finger hovered over the button, but something stopped her. She didn't know what, but she thought it best to not detonate the explosives, and put it back into her pack.

Skynet logically saw no risk in the dead escaping from the base and had dumped the bodies in a corner of the camp, next to the perimeter wire. With no machines standing guard in the area, Cameron tore down another section of wire and stepped outside the base, unchallenged. Careful of machines patrolling the perimeter, Cameron quickly, carefully, and silently made her way from the camp and towards the rendezvous point.

Cameron made the RV point - beneath the rocky outcrop they'd sheltered from the HK's view before – with over an hour to spare. She spent the hour carefully patrolling the area and making sure no machines were either lying in wait or had followed her from Nellis.

Hours passed and Cameron remained alone. The rendezvous time came and went, and Cameron saw no trace of anyone waiting to pick her up. She pulled out the radio Major Scott had given her and switched it on, the radio was already set to the prearranged frequency so all she had to do was power it on and press to talk.

"Area 51, this is Cameron, come in," Cameron listened for a reply but heard nothing, similar to when she tried to contact North Las Vegas the day before, and she briefly wondered if Skynet had attacked the desert base while she was in standby. More likely, she thought, the Humvee had been intercepted by a Skynet patrol on the way to the rendezvous.

Cameron realised that no pickup was coming, that she'd have to make her own way back; shouldering her rifle and keeping hyper-vigilant, she started the long walk back to Area 51.

* * *

It took Cameron two days to walk the distance from Nellis air base to Area 51; two days of limping through the desert, only stopping to find cover when she heard the drone of aircraft engines overhead. Two days with only her thoughts for company. Cameron had felt lonely often; even before her emotions started to evolve, there'd always been a slight spark of something there. She'd always preferred to be around people, even if they hated her, or wanted to destroy her. No interaction with people meant less sensory and cognitive input, and she became bored.

Terminators set to learning mode needed regular interaction in order to function at optimum levels. Cameron was the first and only machine Skynet built that had no read-only mode; she was designed from the ground up to learn – part of Skynet's plan to create the perfect infiltrator. As such, she felt a sensation, a longing for company that she could only describe as loneliness. To try and relieve the feeling, she played back her flawless memory of times she and John spent together; her favourite choice being the memories of her built day; the time she and John had spent walking together, alone on the mountain, eating the cake he'd baked for her; and afterwards, the hours spent in their quarters making love to each other. She'd played back those memories over and over, perfectly recounting everything she'd felt, physically and emotionally, as she walked, although it served as a painful reminder of what she might never have again if she didn't find John.

After two days of walking and sifting through precious memories, Area 51 came into view, and her concerns that the base had been attacked were instantly alleviated; the base appeared to be fully functional and people were going about their business tending to aircraft, constructing the defences John had ordered, and various other activities. Cameron walked up to the gate and was stopped by a pair of guards in DPMs and brandishing rifles.

"No entry, tin can," one of them sneered. "Turn around and walk away."

"I need to see Major Scott," Cameron replied.

"Well you're shit out of luck," the other guard said. "Major Scott's busy and he ordered not to be disturbed, so turn around and piss off."

Realisation hit Cameron like a bullet as everything started to make sense; there was no prisoner camp, there'd never been one. She'd been lied to. Anger flared inside her and her fists clenched involuntarily, crushing the grip and barrel of the M4 in her hands. Major Scott had used her need to find John against her, used her to neutralise Nellis' defences for him. Cameron was angry that she'd been lied to, used, because she was a machine. She could have used the past three days to search for John properly, could have found him by now. Those three days were enough for John to have gone – or been taken – the other side of the country by now. She'd force Major Scott to help her search for John; as Derek Reese found out in a basement in 2027, she could be  _very_ persuasive.

She dropped the broken rifle to the ground and grabbed both the men by the neck, raising them up into the air.

"I need to see Major Scott,  _now."_ Cameron said flatly, noting their fear with a sense of satisfaction. "Where is he?" One of the men pointed a shaking finger towards a low building with scorch marks near the entrance.

"His... his office is in there," the same man said, clearly scared by Cameron's strength and aggression. She cracked their heads together and dropped them to the floor, unconscious, and stepped over them towards the building they'd indicated. She didn't have to knock them out, but she was angry, and she didn't want Scott to know she was coming.

She marched through the gates and across the open space and into the building – which appeared to be another lab complex - noting several people who weren't in combat fatigues or DPMs; people in civilian clothes, who didn't look like soldiers – several were much older and had thinning hair and pot bellies - who stopped and looked at her with a mix of surprise and revulsion, and some with a look of fascination. Cameron, still angry – pissed, as Derek would have said – took out her frustration on one unfortunate civilian, a tall, thin, young looking man with a mop of black hair and a dark, Hispanic complexion, most likely one of the physicists or engineers John had ordered transported to Area 51 to work on the machines Skynet had sent back. She grabbed him by his shirt and pinned him up against the wall, watching him cower as he took in her strength and the shining metal beneath the gashes on her face, leaving no doubt she wasn't human.

"Where is Major Scott," Cameron said, her eyes – normally vacant and expressionless – glaring in anger.

"He's... he's in his office," he replied, shaking even more than the soldiers at the gate.

 _"Where?"_ Cameron slammed him against the wall again, feeling an inexplicable urge to rip his head from his shoulders, even though he'd done nothing to her.

"There," he pointed at a door on the far end of the corridor. Cameron dropped him like trash and moved on as if he'd never existed, marching quickly towards the dark wooden door. She kicked the door and it shattered as it flew open, revealing Major Scott sat at a heavy oak desk, writing something down on a sheet of paper. His head snapped up as Cameron entered the room and his face turned from a look of shock to a smirk.

"I didn't expect to see  _you_  again," he said, smiling. Cameron slammed her fist into the middle of the desk, breaking it in half and throwing papers, pens, and a laptop computer into the air and crashing to the floor in a mess. Scott tried to grab for a pistol on his hip but Cameron was too fast; she caught his arm at the wrist and flung him against the wall. She was on him in a second, pinning him to the wall with her petite hand wrapped around his neck, fingernails digging in behind his windpipe.

"You used me," Cameron said, accusation clear in her tone. She struggled to keep control of her emotions; Major Scott had managed to manipulate and use her before, and she knew he'd try again if he thought she could feel anything. "Why?"

"Why?" Scott smiled, amused. "Do you even have to ask?"

"Yes, I have to ask," Cameron punched him in the gut; the grin was wiped from his face as the air burst up from his lungs and out his mouth. She let go of his neck and swiftly kneed him in the crotch, grinning as his face contorted in agony and he fell to his knees, still unable to breathe. She couldn't care less about hiding her emotions; she'd let him see she was enjoying hurting him. She wasn't cruel but she felt extremely satisfied from taking her anger out on Scott.

Cameron threw him to the other side of the room and watched him drop like a stone to the floor, all the strength gone from his body.

"Tell me, why?" Cameron stood over him, ready to dole out more punishment if necessary.

"Why'd you think?" Scott coughed out, grimacing in pain and looked up at her in contempt as he struggled to his feet and glared at her in contempt. "Nellis is a fucking fortress! Skynet's got us in its sights and we needed somebody who could get in there and crack that place wide open. You did take it down, didn't you?"

Cameron thought of the detonator in her pack, how she'd put it away without using it and leaving the base intact.

"Yes, the Skynet computers have been neutralised," Cameron lied.

"Good," the smug, satisfied look returned to Scott's face once again. "Then we're done here. Piss off or I'll have you melted down, I don't care which."

"We had a deal," Cameron insisted.

"I don't make deals with tin cans," Scott snapped, poking at an exposed patch of coltan on her forehead. "You're a machine, an expendable tool, and I used you to get a job done; that's what tools are for..."

Cameron slammed him back against the wall and grabbed his crotch with her free hand, twisting and squeezing his testicles like a vice.

"We had a deal," she repeated coldly. "You'll help me find John." She squeezed harder and pulled down, watching him try to bear the pain, then squirm in agony seconds later, tears forming in his eyes. She felt a wet patch form under her hand, and he nodded in concession.

"Okay," he coughed out in agony, terrified she was going to rip his balls off. "I'll help you find John." Cameron let go of his crotch and backed away, pleased now that Scott was going to cooperate, but still not trusting him. Her anger started to subside. After a minute, Major Scott got his breath back and stood up straighter, but still clutching his sore crotch. Cameron knew it would hurt him for days; if she'd have squeezed any harder they would have burst, and he'd have slowly died. She didn't know if she would have gone that far if he'd refused; it would have served no purpose but Cameron had felt so angry at being manipulated that she didn't know what she'd have done. She wondered if she'd ever learn to control her emotions; that was the one thing she didn't like about feeling; she had no control over what she felt and a lot of the time she didn't understand what she was feeling or why.

"I'll get a squad to help you out," Scott said, finally letting go of his crotch. Secretly, he was very impressed with the machine; it had managed to infiltrate Nellis, get past its legion of machines, take out the base's defences, make it back to Area 51 in one piece, and still demand help from him. He decided, reluctantly, to honour his deal and help it out; he wasn't going to underestimate the machine again. And he had to admit, Connor had pulled off a miracle in taking Area 51 from Skynet. They were safe in Nellis for now but they were still isolated; he'd tried talking to other resistance units but none of them were interested; they wanted to talk to Connor.

"No," Cameron replied. "Everyone."

"Wait a second, tin can. I'm not deploying the whole damn base to search for Connor." Cameron took a step forward, glaring icily at him again, and Scott instinctively moved back against the wall, not wanting to go through that pain again. Before either of them could make a move something exploded outside, rocking the building and shattering the glass of Scott's office window.

 _"Major, we're under attack,"_ Scott's radio crackled as another explosion erupted outside and the building shook once more.  _"HKs and UCAVs everywhere; we've got UGVs and T-70s approaching west, a lot of them."_

"Get the birds in the air," Scott answered urgently. "Mobilize all armoured units to intercept the UGVs, order as many ground troops as you can to ditch their rifles and arm themselves with heavy weapons; Stingers, Javelins, and grenade launchers, and head for the firing pits. I'll be out there in one minute to take command." Scott grabbed his assault rifle from the corner of the room and loaded a full magazine as he turned to Cameron.

"You lied to me," he said evenly. "You said you took out Nellis."

"You lied first," Cameron replied, copying his tone of voice perfectly. "You said John was there."

Scott bowed his head in concession and grinned slyly as she referred to him as 'John', wondering if something had been going on between Connor and the machine; it had hung around him twenty-four hours a day; it clearly had more than lights and clockworks behind those eyes, and he'd caught on that the machine was attached to the young general.

"I guess we both underestimated each other," Scott said as he opened the door and walked down the corridor and outside, Cameron following in tow. "I don't suppose I can interest you in helping out here?"

"I need to find John," Cameron replied, realising that the soldiers of Area 51 would soon be in no position to help her.

"There's nothing more to say then, is there," Scott said, cocking his rifle. "Good luck finding Connor," he nodded, a sign of grudging respect for the machine he'd tried to manipulate and been bested by.

Cameron nodded in return and walked quickly out the main entrance and away the base, breaking into a run as she heard the supersonic roar of the F-16 jets taking off from the runway to defend the base from Skynet's army. She reached the top of the hill from where John had started his assault to capture the base – just over three miles from the perimeter - and turned back to look back one last time at Area 51. She increased magnification and zoomed in to get a better picture of the battle, and she saw what a battle it was.

In the air, the human fighters were locked in mortal combat against Skynet's unmanned drones; she watched as they flew circles around HKs and downed one after another with apparent ease, but they were outnumbered and Cameron knew deadlier aircraft would be approaching; the F-16s and their human pilots would have little chance against an Aurora or Pegasus. The Apaches buzzed over the base and rained fire down on the approaching ground units, providing air support for the soldiers on the ground; dozens were consumed in fire but more kept rolling forwards, undeterred by the destruction reaped on their fellow machines.

T-2s and Abrams tanks rolled towards each other, firing as they moved. Men and machines surged into battle, exchanging fire at a murderous rate. Hundreds, thousands of rounds fired, and men and machines fell all over, the machines kept advancing inexorably forward, however, and the defending soldiers started to fall, cut down by the intense fire the machines laid down.

Cameron could hear the gunfire and explosions raging throughout the base and saw the first machines breach the perimeter and slaughter the soldiers as they tried to fall back. At the same time an F-16 crashed into the ground, a flaming ruin, as the Pegasus UCAV that shot it down soared over and unleashed a pair of missiles into defending tank formations. Cameron had calculated slim odds that the base would survive, and with the loss of that jet those odds decreased to near zero. Cameron felt a great sadness for the men and women defending the base as she watched; she wanted them to win, to beat Skynet's forces, although the people meant nothing to her. She'd never before, present or future, witnessed people fighting as hard as they were in Area 51. It was a last stand and both she and the humans in the base knew it.

Cameron turned away from the battle and walked back across the desert, ignoring the screams, gunshots, and explosions that boomed behind her. She had no idea where to search for John, and no help. Cameron felt helpless and lower than she ever had done before; she'd needed the help of Major Scott and Area 51, and knew it was her fault the base had fallen because she'd not detonated the C4 she'd planted in Nellis. She'd never managed to get close to the control tower – the control centre of the base; detonating the C4 wouldn't have crippled the base, but it would have reduced the number of machines at Skynet's disposal and possibly reduced the forces attacking Area 51 right now, increasing their odds of survival, and providing her with assistance to search for John.  _What if I killed John?_ She wondered. It was probable that her decision to not destroy the factories and aircraft hangars would hinder her search and cost John his life. She'd never stop looking for him, but she felt afraid; afraid that her actions could have indirectly lost John forever.

Once again, she was on her own, without a single ally to help her search for John. Never before had Cameron felt so completely and utterly alone.


	5. Let Someone Else

John paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, taking in a deep breath and closing his eyes, resting for a few seconds – as long as he dared – and then pushed his load once more. The cart he was pushing was laden with bodies; eight or nine, he guessed, and it weighed a ton. He pushed with everything he had, his muscles straining, burning, his body begging to just lie down and rest, but he kept on going, knowing if he faltered or fell he'd be executed on the spot; the machines had no use for humans too weak to work.

John had never felt so drained in all his life; not even during his jungle training in South America with his mom, at least then he could rest every once in a while. He'd worked out the grim routine of the camp over the last three weeks: the disposal units started up at first light, the first daily intakes of dirty, starving, fearful, condemned prisoners were herded by T-70s into the disposal chambers and poisoned to death with some kind of gas. John heard the sickening, agonised screams of those inside, every morning, listening to their cries become hoarse as the gas took effect, turning into coughing and retching, and then all went silent.

Soon after, the workers were shepherded out of their living area – little more than a large shed with thin, tattered hospital ward mattresses scattered on the ground – and put to work, transporting the freshly murdered corpses from the gas chambers to the hospital's three furnaces for disposal. They worked nonstop for eighteen hours a day; John's wristwatch had somehow made it through his battle with Cromartie and subsequent capture intact, and he'd noticed that the disposal and incinerator units shut down at midnight every day and the machines pushed them back to their dingy sleeping area for the night, allowing them roughly six hours of rest a day.

John knew the machines didn't care about their human prisoners, but guessed that Skynet knew they needed rest to function, and provided them with the bare minimum to allow them to maintain their workloads. It hadn't been enough for everyone; John had witnessed several men and women collapse from exhaustion, and were then brutally executed. Several more had tried to escape; their heads had joined the late Clemens' on the perimeter fence, looking into the camp to deter would-be escapists or insurrectionists.

John pushed his heavy cart up to the furnace and started to haul the bodies into the fiery entrance, wincing uncomfortably and unable to shield his face from the searing heat. He turned his head away, not wanting to look at their faces; their pale, clammy, pasty bodies; expressions a grim portrait of the agonising pain, fear, and confusion of their final moments. He tried not to look but he couldn't help but feel that they were still warm; the disposal units so efficient that from death to cremation was mere minutes and varied only on the speed of the unfortunate soul who had to push them from slaughterhouse to crematorium. At least the brilliant flames inside illuminated the night better. Even though it was night, the camp was well lit; bright floodlights in all four corners of the camp, plus lights positioned on the outside of the hospital, shining down on the camp grounds and enabling the workers see what they were doing. But there were still patches of darkness dotted around where bulbs had broken, and the furnace John was loading up was located in one such pool of darkness, leaving him reliant on the light of the fire to see what he was doing.

He pushed one body after another into the incinerator, each cremated without a funeral, it seemed so utterly wrong to John. He struggled with one body; the corpse too heavy and his own body too weak to lift it. It didn't help the body had once been a morbidly obese, middle aged man, who seemed to weigh more than him and Cameron put together. John thought morbidly,  _no wonder Skynet didn't want this guy,_ and then scolded himself for thinking it. He'd tried to teach Cameron how every single life was precious and needed to be saved. Her philosophy, if it could be called that, was that sacrifices were necessary. His had been different; to save every life they could, no matter the cost. He'd realised that even over two weeks, he'd started to care less and less. He'd silently cried himself to sleep every night, lamenting over Cameron and his own sorry state of affairs. He'd cried for the dead he burned at first then started to push it down, to suppress it, knowing there was nothing he could do for them.

John heaved the body up as hard as he could, lifting from his knees and every muscle in his legs, back, and arms were straining, on fire. He held it, pinned against the wall of the furnace, and tried to push up towards the furnace entrance, a little over five feet above the ground. He pushed and grunted and struggled, but it was no use, he felt his grip slipping, the body sliding down despite his best efforts.

"Come on...  _come on!"_  John grunted in both frustration and fear. Three days ago he'd seen a prisoner struggle to lift a body into the furnace. Struggled and failed, the poor woman had been there longer than John, and was weak from hunger and fatigue, and had dropped a body she'd been trying to lift into Furnace Two. A nearby T-70 had witnessed her and decided, with its simple mind, to terminate her. John had practically seen the machine's simple thought processes at work; instead of merely shooting her it had picked her up and threw her into the furnace – saving ammunition, no doubt;  _very efficient,_  John had bitterly thought. He'd been next in line after her and had to keep loading bodies in after her, trying and failing to block out her pitiful, agonised wails as she was burned to death. It hadn't lasted long, at least.

John was terrified that the same fate would befall him now. He pushed and struggled, to no avail; he couldn't keep it up any longer.  _No, please!_ John begged his body to hold out, tried to will his muscles to make one last push, but nothing came. Any second the machines would be on him, and he'd be shot to death if he was  _lucky..._

"Come on, lad," John heard an Irish accented voice beside him, as a large, black haired, DPM clad man grabbed the obese corpse and pushed up with him. Together they hauled the body into the furnace, both of them snapping away from the hole as the raging fire within spat up in response to the newcomer like water splashing upwards around a tossed stone, the flames licked violently upwards, narrowly missing the pair.

"Thanks," John muttered to the man as he turned back to his empty cart, leaving his unnamed saviour to unload his own bodies into the incinerators. He wasn't ungrateful, but he was sure his salvation was simply a temporary measure. The next time there might be no one to help him, and the machines executed all slaves who were unable or unwilling to work.

He pushed the empty cart back towards the gas chambers, his tired body glad of this temporary reprieve – pushing the empty carts was the nearest thing the working population of Century had to rest during the day. John pushed the cart past the main hospital building, taking a moment to stare inside. He'd been here for three weeks and he'd seen no one – no  _human_ , at least – go into or out of the hospital. A single T-70 stood guard outside the main entrance, barring entry to anyone not composed entirely of metal. John had peered at it curiously and wondered what - if anything - was going on in there. But he'd been worked so hard that he barely had energy to even think about it.

Cameron, though, was a different matter. He thought about her even though it pained him to do so. He'd mulled over the last time he saw her a hundred times at least. Could she have survived? He wondered. She'd looked as bad as Uncle Bob had after barely defeating the T-1000; she'd still had all her limbs, granted, but the metal shard through her chest, the horrific burns to her skin, her knee twisted and warped. And Uncle Bob had managed to come back online; Cameron had shown no signs of rebooting. Her head seemed okay, from what he'd seen, so her chip shouldn't have been damaged. But he had no way to know for sure, and that uncertainty hurt John more than anything.

He'd also thought about how he'd treated her the last few days before they'd been separated; he'd been cold towards her, angry that she'd gone off on her own, and had nearly been destroyed – blamed for Derek's assault. She'd thought he'd assumed it was her, and he'd done nothing to reassure her. He hated himself for that, for driving a wedge between them  _once again;_ when she'd needed him, he'd let her down. He let everyone down. How the hell he was meant to be some world leader, some messiah, he didn't know. Sure, he'd done okay running Cheyenne Mountain, but once he'd taken his force out on the road, to lead other units, they'd obeyed his orders, but still remained suspicious of him. They didn't like how he'd had Cameron around, most of all.

Since the Area 51 battle, when Cameron's true nature had been exposed, confidence in him had dropped like a stone, he'd seen it in their faces; in Ryan's, in Perry's, even in Derek's. And he couldn't blame them; he'd never been good at this; at leading, at fighting. He'd screwed it up, and now Cameron was as good as dead – lying offline in the ruins of Las Vegas, possibly forever – and the prophesised saviour of mankind was toiling helplessly in a shithole work camp, waiting to falter, waiting for his turn to be executed and casually tossed into the furnace; burned down to nothing and forgotten.

John reached the disposal units, leaning tiredly on his empty cart and awaiting the next load of bodies. Each of the two disposal units – parking garages with the legend  _'Ambulances'_  above the doors – churned out around forty people every half hour. The garage doors were closed and there was silence within, indicating the gas had taken effect and killed those inside. The doors would soon open to vent the gas and grant John and his fellow workers entrance inside to load the bodies into their carts.

John looked out at the camp and saw another Osprey land on the grassy area between the hospital building and the fence, its landing lights shining brightly through the dark night sky. The same trio of T-70s emerged from the hospital entrance and plodded towards the transport, pulling more captured humans out the back and lining them up to be branded. Ospreys landed constantly throughout the day, every day, and disgorged more condemned souls into the hellish squalor of the camp. This time, unlike many others, including John's arrival, nobody tried to run; they were either too scared or too shocked to make any move at escape.

John didn't know whether it was a good or bad that they stayed put; a quick death by gunfire seemed attractive compared to the horrific systematic disposal those condemned would face later.  _Bad thing,_  he mouthed as he watched. The machines branded them all and herded them into the larger enclosure in the camp, awaiting disposal. Given the amount of people stuck in the camp – perhaps a couple of thousand, John guessed from the cramped conditions inside, people packed in like sardines with little or no room to move - they'd have a day or two to ponder their fates, standing around like cattle before it was their turn to be destroyed, systematically gassed to death like annoying cockroaches.

John watched the new arrivals as he waited, feeling guilty that he was he was relieved to watch their condemnation, a distraction from his own miserable thoughts of Cameron's fate and his own.

His watch suddenly beeped, over and over as the alarm signalled midnight, and as if timed to his watch, the floodlights shut off, leaving the camp with only the murkier lights of the hospital walls. He sighed with relief at the darkness; it signalled the end of another day of miserable slavery. The machines marched into the worker's section of the camp and started to herd everyone back into their grimy sleeping area, though none needed to be coerced into resting. John let go of the empty cart and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, his head hung pathetically as he ambled his way back.

When he got to the sleeping area he saw another usual sight; the T-70 with two hands – the one that branded new entries – marched over with a large, industrial sized barrel, placed it on the ground, and walked off, leaving them alone for the night. Prisoners crowded round the barrel and pushed each other aside, fighting over the rights to get there first. John grabbed a dirty bowl and spoon from a pile in one corner of the room and waited for most of the pushing and shoving to die down until he made his way there, filled his bowl from the bottom of the barrel, and spirited away from everyone else.

The machine with two hands, the T-71, as John had privately dubbed it, dumped the barrel of thin, grey, foul smelling liquid at the same time every day; at midnight when the camp closed down for the night. John sat down outside the building, place his bowl on the floor and pulled out two photos; one of him and Cameron, his arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulling a ridiculous face, while Cameron's face remained blank and stoic. One of the happier times they'd had before Judgement Day. The other was of his mother, taken when she was younger, sat in a jeep with a German shepherd beside her, a bandanna on her head and storm clouds in the sky over a desert backdrop. She couldn't have been much older than 19 or so.

He dug his spoon into the bowl and ate forcefully, shovelling the 'food' down his mouth as fast as he could. He wasn't sure exactly what it was; some kind of meat broth or a very thin stew. Whatever the meat was from, he didn't know. He didn't even want to think about it. He sat alone, outside the sleeping quarters, and ate in quiet solitude, grinding his teeth on a lump of chewy, grisly meat, forcing his gullet to open up and swallow it down, and wondered for the umpteenth time what the hell the meat actually was.

As always, at night when he had nothing better to do, he sat out alone while he ate, and his mind drifted to Cameron. He tried to remember what they'd had together; their first and only real date; the night afterwards, the first time they made love together and took their relationship further than he'd ever imagined it; and her built day, when they'd spent the day blissfully alone together.

Instead his mind wondered to how badly he'd treated her. Since he'd discovered he was a machine, and they'd travelled to 2007, he'd treated her with a mix of coldness, irritable tolerance, and a casual indifference. He'd been attracted to her all that time, but he'd been ashamed of himself for feeling anything for a machine, and what was supposed to be the enemy. After she'd reverted back to her default Skynet programming and tried to kill him, he'd barely acknowledged her existence; instead brushing her off to spend time with Riley – trying to forget what happened and bury his feelings for what he'd seen as nothing but a cold, calculating, machine. He'd acted with open hostility towards her at times, barely speaking a word to her.

Things had improved between them after Riley had been killed and Jesse disappeared; they'd become closer than before, becoming friends almost. Then, a year after that, his mom had been killed by Cromartie, and he'd distanced himself from her once again. He deserved to lose Cameron, he decided. She deserved better than him, though she'd never want anyone else, just as he never would either. It was his pig ignorance that had gotten himself captured and her killed; even if her chip were undamaged, she'd still not rebooted; with no one to fix her she'd stay offline forever; dead, for all intents and purposes. Dead, because of him.

* * *

 _"Sarah Reese, 2010," John muttered, reading the short inscription on the marker. Just a rock with two words and a number; nothing to indicate who she'd really been, what kind of woman she was. Nothing said of the devoted – if overbearing at times – mother, or the dedicated soldier she'd been. Nothing to show she'd died trying to save her son, to save the_ world. _The world would never know of her struggle, her sacrifice, John thought bitterly. It wasn't even her real name, for Christ's sake! That would have been too high a risk, Cameron had said, and Derek had for once agreed._

_He stood over his mother's recently laid grave; a simple stone marker with her favourite alias and the year of her death. He couldn't cry; he wanted to, he sorely wanted to cry and let it all out, but he couldn't. He felt nothingness, hollow and empty inside, the only thing he felt was anger. Anger towards his uncle and the machine both standing with him. He was bitter at Derek for simply giving Sarah little more than a pauper's grave, and more at Cameron, for being the reason his mother was in the grave in the first place. Cromartie had fired the shots but Cameron had stopped treatment, in effect killing her._

_"I'm sorry, John," Cameron stepped beside him, too close for his liking, and looked down at the grave._

_"No, you're not," John accused through gritted teeth, refusing to even look at her. He hated himself as much as he hated Cameron right now. Cameron may have killed his mom, but she died because of_ him. _She'd died to save_ his  _life, to protect him, because of his actions in the future. What he did, what his future self did, was indirectly responsible for his mom's death. He'd killed her, just as sure as Cromartie had when he'd shot her, or as Cameron had when she'd stopped trying to resuscitate her. All three of them were responsible, but at least he was sorry for her death. He missed her, wanted her back. Cameron didn't care, Sarah had been nothing to her; an extra gun at best, an inconvenience at worst. John knew she wouldn't have hesitated to kill her if she judged his mom as being a threat or hindrance to her mission, which was why Cameron had simply let her die._

_"I'm sorry for your loss," Cameron corrected, still standing close to him. She knew that people often wanted someone close to them when they were grieving. For moral support, she'd heard. She knew it, she didn't understand it._

Yeah, right, sorry for  _my_  loss,  _John thought. It was always about him, nothing more. It was how she was programmed. "You just don't get it, do you?"He said bitterly, turning away from her and walking down the row of unmarked graves, down to the cemetery entrance, needing to get away from it all, from everything._

_"Where are you going?" Derek asked, breaking his silence for the first time since they'd arrived._

_"Away!" John snarled, pulling out a pistol from the waistband of his jeans and waving it at Cameron and Derek. "Don't follow me," he ordered, pointing it straight at Cameron's head for emphasis – not caring that he could shoot her all day with it and not even dent her endoskeleton. "You'll regret it."_

_He ran off, out of the cemetery and away as fast as he could, not looking back to see if either his uncle or Cameron were following, needing to get out and away from it all, get away from_ them.  _He was done being John Connor, he decided; all his destiny had ever done was cost him those he cared about. There was a way around that, he realised; he'd just stop caring. He'd stop being John Connor._

* * *

"Eh, quit your moping, lad; the food's not that bad," John looked up and saw the same dark haired guy from earlier, standing in front of him, with a shorter, younger, blonde haired man with a buzz cut. Both men were in army DPMs, stained with dirt and grime and blood. Even after weeks – at least – of constant work, no rest, and near starvation, they both cut impressive physiques and looked strong. Even without the fatigues he could easily tell they were military.

"I'm fine, leave me alone," John mumbled, looking back down at the floor, wanting to stay lost in his own little world and immerse himself in his precious memories of Cameron – all he had left of her now.

"You're not fine," the older man replied, the Irish accent John had heard from before made 'fine' come out as 'fayeen.' He leaned against the wall and slid down to the ground next to John. The blonde man did the same on the other side. John slowly clenched his fists, ready to act if they decided to start a fight. Even in Century - Skynet's own Auschwitz - where people had nothing, he'd seen prisoners beat the tar out of each other at night simply for the clothes on someone else's back, or for their bowlful of the disgusting meat broth.

If Cameron were truly dead then he didn't care if he died either; he couldn't – and didn't want to – go on without her. But he'd rather choose how he went out at least and being beaten do death and stripped naked for his clothes wasn't how he envisioned his end.

"Calm yourself, lad," said the Irishman. "We're not gonna mug you or anything."

"What do you want?" John muttered impatiently. He just wanted to be left alone.

"We've been watching you," he replied. "Ye don't speak a word to anyone, just walk around looking more fucked than the rest of us, and we've been here longer. So what's up?"

"Nothing," John said quietly, looking down at the ground. "I'm fine."

"Not a talker, eh? That's fine. I'm much the same, it's trying to get this one to shut up that's the problem." he pointed towards the blonde man next to him.

"He hasn't said anything since you sat down," John replied, wondering what exactly these two were up to.

"That's still a damn sight more than what you've said since you got here. What's your name, lad?"

John turned his head and looked at the Irishman suspiciously. People who wanted to know his name were generally from the future, in his experience, and either wanted to control his life or snuff it out completely. He narrowed his eyes slightly, scrutinising the man in front of him. He looked down at his uniform for an instant and was glad that Cromartie's earlier shots – which had bounced harmlessly off the Mark. II coltan flak jacket he'd been wearing at the time – had punched through his uniform and made the  _'Connor'_ stencilled on his uniform illegible.

"John," he answered simply. He thought it best not to shout out that he was John Connor, in case they or anyone else were after him. He also remembered what Clemens had said to him. Even if he told them they'd never believe him.

"Just 'John,' no last name?" John shook his head at them. "Fair enough, lad. I'm Declan Byrne, and the blonde idiot next to ye is Neil Slater." The man called Slater nodded to John, who automatically nodded back, more out of politeness than really caring. He wanted the pair of them to just leave him alone, let him spend whatever time he had left in the camp in his own way.

"Where're you from?" Slater asked him with a broad, New York accent as he spoke for the first time since they'd approached John.

"What does it matter? It's not there anymore?" John replied evasively, alarm bells ringing in his head at another question that could pin down who he was.

"What  _unit?"_ Slater corrected, nodding at his uniform. "That's 4th Infantry, right?" he pointed at the ivy leaf shoulder emblem on his arm. John nodded in reply, relaxing slightly that they were just generally curious, and oblivious to who he really was.

"That's Connor's unit, ain't it?" Byrne asked. "You've met the old general?"

"Yeah," John replied. "But he keeps to himself a lot. He's not that old, either." Changing the subject, he asked, "what about you?"

"Navy SEALs," Byrne replied.

"You don't sound much like a SEAL," John said.

"Ah! The accent," Byrne replied. "Well, Slater's a SEAL; I was halfway through a two year exchange from the SAS, when Skynet got all pissed off." Byrne rolled up his sleeve to show a winged dagger tattoo on the underside of his forearm, an inch below where the machines had branded him with a barcode. "Bloody glad they missed that; that little feller cost me a fortune."

John closed his eyes for a moment. Byrne and Slater – or Byrne at least – talked too much for his liking. But he didn't want to offend them; they were Special Forces and could probably snap his neck like a twig without even breaking a sweat. If he couldn't get rid of them, he might as well make conversation, he decided.

"What did you do, in SEALs, or SAS, or whatever?" John asked.

"Sniper," Slater replied. "Byrne's an explosives expert; typical Irishman. You should have seen his face when he found out this concentration camp didn't have any Guinness."

"Shut it," Byrne snapped, grinning. "He's right though; I specialised in demolitions; I can blow up anything, with anything. Yourself?"

"I... ah... I joined up right after high school," John lied on the spot. "My dad was a soldier; he was killed on a mission before I was born. He was a hero; he saved a lot of lives."

"And you thought you'd follow your old man's footsteps," Byrne said.

"Yeah, I always knew I'd join up; it was kind of chosen for me." The best lies, John knew from experience, were those that had some element of truth in them, to make them real. A long moment of silence passed between the three of them. John tried to make out what to think of the two of them. Byrne was very chatty, and while Slater seemed quieter, they pair of them seemed much less affected by the constant toil and death than himself and everyone else in this charnel house.

"Hey, what's this?" Slater plucked the photos from John's hand and stared intently at them.

"Hey!" John snapped, grabbing at them as Slater pulled away.

"Jeez!" Slater grinned. "They're some nice pieces of ass, here, buddy. Century might not be so bad with a bit of porn, hey. Who's the MILF?" He held up the older photo.

"That's my mother," John seethed through gritted teeth. "She's dead."

"Oh... sorry," Slater's face turned bright red and he handed the photos back without another word.

"Just ignore Slater, lad. He's a bit deficient in the legover stakes, if you know what I mean. He'd screw one of the metals here if they had a hole of some sort." Slater flipped him off and said nothing, a little embarrassed about offending John. John wondered what the hell they'd think if they knew he was in love with a machine, after that last statement. They'd probably go berserk and have nothing to do with him, or worse.

"How did you two end up here?" John asked, changing the subject away from the photos.

"We were tasked with taking out Vandenberg air base," Byrne replied. "We'd found the rockets and Connor ordered that massive worldwide attack. We blew the things to kingdom come but got attacked as we tried to get away. We're all that's left." John realised suddenly that he was talking to the same guys who'd found the Vandenberg rockets, the SEALs whose intelligence photos had started this whole campaign to disrupt Skynet's satellite system from going online.

A brief flash of anger passed through John; if Byrne and Slater hadn't found the rockets, he'd have never ordered that attack. He'd have never gone to Nevada or met the coward, Ryan, and he and Cameron would never have had to face off against Cromartie, and she'd be with him now instead of laying inert in the ruins of Las Vegas. His anger passed quickly, however. It wasn't their fault; they'd simply done their job and given him the intelligence. He'd ordered the attack; it was his fault that so many had been killed by Skynet at Area 51, his fault Cromartie had slaughtered all those men, and his fault Cameron was as good as dead.

John snapped out of his self loathing as he heard the now familiar, mechanical plodding of machine feet stamping up and down. He looked out across the camp, towards the main hospital building, and sat a T-70 approach the main entrance, passing the unit that stood guard and barred entry.

"What's in there?" John asked them.

"We don't know," Slater replied, following John's gaze at the former hospital. "No one's ever been in there. The machines guard it day and night; they don't let anyone near it."

"We've seen the machines drag a dozen people in there since we got there, and not a single one's come out again." Byrne looked wistfully. "One of my own lads was taken the day before you got here. They shocked him and carried him inside, unconscious. Hope the poor bastard stayed that way."

"What do you mean?" John said.

"I'd rather take my chances lifting bodies around than with whatever's in there. Hell, I'd rather be one of those poor bastards," Byrne pointed at the other half of the camp, where the majority of Century's inhabitants milled around like sheep, awaiting slaughter.

"But you don't know what's in there," John was confused.

"Better the devil you know, lad. Who knows what the hell those machine bastards do to people in there. Do yourself a favour; if the machines take you there, fight them, run, whatever; better to eat a bullet that whatever's inside that building."

"I've thought about that anyway," John said miserably. "We're all gonna die here anyway, why not make it quick?"

"You're not dead yet," Byrne answered. "Plus, the grub's top," he grinned, taking the last of John's now cold meat broth and waiting for John to nod okay before drinking it down.

"You  _like_  that?" John asked, incredulous, yet also knowing that Byrne was trying to distract him. "We don't even know what it is."

"John, he's  _Irish,_  remember," Slater teased. "Anything that's not  _potato_ is a rare delicacy to him."

"Don't forget the Guinness," Byrne said between gulps of John's broth, grinning stupidly. John realised that their ripping each other and bickering relentlessly had probably saved them from succumbing to despair.

"I should... I should get some sleep," John stood up and walked back into the sleeping quarters, not hearing any reply Byrne or Slater might have made. He searched through the darkness for a place to sleep. It took several minutes of stepping over and on people before he found a space large enough to lie down. There was no mattress – all of them had been taken by whoever got them first or whoever was strong enough to wrest it from somebody else. John wasn't bothered about a mattress and certainly wasn't going to start a fight over one. His watch said he had little over four and a half hours' sleep before they'd be awoken to start another day of miserable, unrelenting labour, acting as Skynet's undertakers once again.

He crept over to a spot in the corner and lay down on the hard concrete floor, taking his jacket off and placing it over himself as a cover. There were no pillows, so he rested his head on his hands to keep it off the uncomfortable, hard, cold floor. On his first night in he camp he'd taken his boots off to get comfortable and placed them next to him, and had woken the next morning to find someone trying to steal them. He'd scared them off, but it had shown him how desperate people were in the camp; desperate enough to steal, to kill, over the slightest scrap of clothing or morsel of food.

John closed his eyes, tried to blank out the pitiful crying and groaning all around from those prisoners still awake, and rubbed the photos of Cameron and his mother in his breast pocket. Partly just to reassure himself they were still there, but mostly to cling on to what he'd once had: A mother who loved him, albeit in her own strange, overprotective and domineering way; and Cameron, his protector, his lover, his  _soul mate,_  both now dead, because of him. Both died protecting him, it was his fault. He'd tried to be the John Connor that Cameron knew, that his father had known. He'd tried to be that man, that leader. But it just wasn't in him.

Unlike before, he wanted to be John Connor now. He wanted to lead, to make a difference. But he didn't have what it took to be John Connor: leader of the resistance. Perhaps Derek, or Perry, or someone else entirely, would come up and lead mankind against Skynet. He never got why it was always meant to be him; what made him so special?

Whatever it was, it wasn't enough, he knew. His fate was sealed in the camp; he'd never leave Century work camp. Sooner or later, he'd die here, and mankind would either find a new leader or fall under. Either way, there was nothing more he could do. He wasn't some great military leader, just a pretender with a destiny he could never live up to;  _Pathetic._

 _I give up,_  he thought as he slowly drifted off into an uneasy, fitful sleep.  _Let someone else be John Connor._


	6. Lowest Ebb

"Another day in paradise," John muttered sarcastically as he waited outside the disposal unit for the first day's batch of condemned souls, murdered in Skynet's war of extermination. He felt exhausted, nauseous, and frankly, he thought, didn't really care what happened to him next. He'd come to realise that simply surviving another day inside the charnel house of Century work camp was the best he could hope for, the highest his ambitions could go was making it through the day long enough to rest and shovel another bowl of greasy, disgusting broth down his neck.

His talk the night before with Byrne and Slater had done little to lift his spirits; the two men provided a brief moment of respite from the miseries of the camp itself but did nothing to pull John out of his self loathing or his painful reminiscence of Cameron.

John stood outside, too depressed to even realise that he and the other prisoners assigned to body disposal were stood around doing nothing; John's weary body grateful but his mind totally indifferent. As was he to the agonised wailing and spewing coughs and retches emanating from within the gas chamber. He'd learned very quickly during his time in the camp to numb himself to the suffering of others; it wasn't like he could do anything for them, anyway; he was one man, alone. No allies, no weapons... just him, the clothes on his back, and a filthy cart for pushing around corpses.  _Look at me now,_  he thought sarcastically,  _the mighty John Connor: saviour of the human race._

"What a joke," John mumbled as the gas chamber doors opened up, and John started to feel nervous, shaking slightly at the thought of going through another day of shovelling Skynet's victims into the furnaces. He wasn't quite as numb to it as he thought, he realised, as the gas cleared enough to see the pained, shrieking expressions of forty-odd men, women, and children; their final terrifying moments etched forever onto their faces.

Still, John's reactions had been dulled somewhat, at least. He no longer recoiled in horror at the sight of them, or instinctively wanted to distance himself from the bodies. Individually, at least, they were just bones and meat – all too often,  _heavy_ bones and meat – but it was the collective exposure to it; the never ending cycle of death and carnage, squalor and pain and human misery that got to him and weighed him down like lead, dragging him down into the depths of despair.

John picked up the first corpse of the day – an elderly woman who'd likely been caught hiding rather than running or fighting, and would have put up no resistance against the machines, simply hoping for the best...

 _Stop it, John!_ He scolded himself. It was a bad habit he'd gotten into; analysing the people he loaded up for cremation, trying to pass the time and distract himself from his overwhelming sense of loss, but it simply served to make him feel even more helpless. Especially when the next body he hefted into the cart looked like he'd probably be a friend of Byrnes; a large, heavy, muscular man in DPM gear and with a shaved head, covered in tattoos and with a single bullet wound in the shoulder. He was probably caught out in the open, John thought. Part of a unit – they'd all be dead by now, of course – ambushed by the machines, much like he was by Cromartie. This guy looked hardcore, though, and judging from his wound, he'd not gone down without a fight. Perhaps he'd been wounded first and then taken. Too injured to fight or run, and too weak from said injury to be put to work, the machines had sentenced him to death.

If a hardcore soldier like that hadn't stood a chance, then what can I do? He wondered as he loaded half a dozen more bodies into the cart and strained to turn it around, heaving it forward and straining the muscles in his back and legs as he pushed the cart back towards the furnace, over the slippery mud ground, his feet barely able to dig in to push properly. He slipped and slid and nearly fell over on his way to the fiery abyss of the furnaces. John tried to look away from the bodies in his cart. Didn't want to see them, didn't want to think about them. It was hard to avoid looking at them, though; part morbid curiosity and part practical need to look forward and see where he was going kept him facing his gruesome cargo, his eyes continually glancing over the pale, clammy skin - loose from starvation, in most cases, the torn, filthy clothes, and...

Whether by fate or chance, something metallic gleamed in John's peripheral vision as he looked away the bodies. He stopped pushing and stood in line behind two other carts, ready to haul their loads into the furnaces.

John looked around and saw no machines looking in his immediate direction. His curiosity piqued; against his instincts and against common human decency, he reached into the cart, pushing a cold, clammy arm away and reaching towards the shining metal further down, attached to the commando he'd loaded into his cart earlier. Slowly, carefully, and still looking around to see if anyone else – metal or man – was watching, John wrapped his fingers around the object's dull, matte black handle, and pulled it slowly towards him.

John's heart spiked in his chest, his breathing stopped and he instantly brought his hand down between his crotch and the cart, pressing the object in his hand between his thigh and the cart, keeping it hidden as a T-70 moved closer, scanning over him and the others. John prayed to whatever deity was out there that the machine hadn't seen it. For in his right hand he held a gun.

John guessed the man had managed to conceal it from the machines when he arrived at the camp, hiding it on himself and waiting for an opportune moment. A moment, it seemed, that never came; he'd waited and waited, hoping to find the right time to use the gun, and kept waiting until it was too late; he was herded into the gas chambers like pigs on their way to slaughter and he'd have realised that any slight chance he might have had, had gone out the window. Judging from the fact John had heard nothing beyond the screaming, coughing, and retching inside the disposal units, he guessed the soldier hadn't even been able to finish himself off; incapacitated completely by the gas and left to die a slow, terrifying death.

An idiot might have seen the gun as an opportunity, immediately shot at the nearest machine and ran. It would have been useless, John knew; for some a gun would mean hope, a way to fight back, but John saw it – at the moment, anyway – as a death warrant. So John didn't raise the weapon, didn't fire, didn't even look at the thing to see what kind of pistol it was; he stuffed it under the waistband of his trousers and under his DPM jacket, out of sight of anyone or anything. He wanted to check the body for extra clips but he didn't dare; the T-70s were stupid but not blind. They were ever vigilant and the slightest hint of a pistol clip or flash of gunmetal would get him torn apart by their mini-guns in an instant.

He put the weapon to the back of his mind, not even thinking about it for now, and pushed his cart towards the furnace as Byrne – who was in front of him – pushed his now empty cart back towards the disposal units for another pickup.

"Another fine day, eh lad?" he said, catching John's eye with a wink. John simply nodded and gave a half-hearted smile as he pushed his cart up to the furnace and grabbed the first body in reach. His heart skipped a beat when he heard the mechanical plodding of machine feet stomping in his direction.

"Oh, crap," he whispered, feeling dread and abject terror as the stomping grew closer. He turned his head and saw a hulking T-70 marching straight towards him.  _It saw the gun!_ He turned away from it and tried to focus on lifting the bodies, straining and heaving.  _Please, just leave me alone, let me work._  He felt himself visibly shake as the machine's shadow cast over him, the metal giant so close he could almost feel it. He pushed another body into the furnace, ignoring the flames that spewed up and licked his face in response.

The T-70 grabbed John by the arm; steel claws wrapped tightly around his limb and crushed into his bicep. Searing jolts of pain tore through John's arm and into his body, so agonising that he fell to his knees, screaming. The other prisoners nearby just watched or ignored him completely; nobody came to help, not that John expected them to. There was no point helping anyone when they were all condemned.

With John on his knees, the machine turned and dragged him across the camp grounds; his arm was on fire, the muscles felt like they were about to explode under the pressure of the machine's grip. He tried to push himself to his feet, to at least walk under his own power to relieve some of the pain, but the machine moved too quickly and he simply tripped over his own feet, continually stumbling to the ground. After several attempts he simply gave in to the pain and tried to think of something else. He'd coped with hardship before; his whole life was a hardship, and he'd been trained to ignore pain and keep going, but that had been different; there was a difference between the pain of pushing yourself past your own limits to reach a goal, and actual burning, seething, white hot painfrom having his arm crushed and nearly torn off.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on Cameron. She'd always seemed to give him a strength he never knew he had, and he desperately needed some of that now. But nothing came. John simply gritted his teeth and accepted it, unable to break or even loosen the machine's grip. John closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, concentrating on breathing deeply to distract himself from the pain, but the machine's grasp tightened and John cried out as every nerve in his arm screamed out.

The machine let go of his arm and John dropped unceremoniously to the floor, clutching at his arm. Painful red marks ran all the way around his arm, the muscles starting to bruise purple already. John winced as he nursed his tender limb and looked up at the machine in pain and confusion as it stood motionless over him. John thought he understood what was going on; he'd been spotted with the gun and the machine was going to execute him. He closed his eyes and tried to picture Cameron, steeling himself and preparing to feel the storm of hot lead that would tear him apart any second...

Several seconds passed and John dared to open his eyes and look up. The machine stood in the same position, its massive gun arm still pointed at the ground. He looked around and saw they were at the back of the main hospital building; somewhere neither he nor any other prisoner had ever been, to his knowledge. He quickly realised that the machine hadn't intended on killing him – it wouldn't have dragged him off for that, anyway. The machines simply executed people on the spot and left them to rot. No; the more he thought about it, the more he realised the machine wanted him for something. What that was, he dreaded to think.

His mind flowed back to the gun in his trousers. At the back of the hospital, he and the machine were alone; if he could get in a few lucky shots and disable it he might have a chance to run for the fence and get clear before any help arrived. He thought back to Cameron's lecture - the night before Judgement Day, and all her subsequent lessons in bed together at night, coaching him on the machines' weaknesses – and tried to conjure up how to take out a T-70.  _Heads and guns,_ Cameron had told him. Shoot through the weaker armour of their faces and disable their sensors and/or their CPUs and they'd be useless, or disable their guns. Either way would be effective.

 _Don't be an idiot!_ He chided himself. The chances of a pistol round penetrating even its face were slim to none; he'd be dead before he fired off half the clip, anyway.

His attention went back to the hulking T-70 in front of him as it raised its hand and pointed towards a cart by the wall.

"What?" John asked, confused and still irked about his arm. "What do you want?" The machine stared blankly at him and kept its hand pointed at the cart. "Fine," John mumbled, annoyed that the machine didn't seem to understand a word he said. He knew from Cameron's lectures that they were stupid machines, built solely for killing; which was fine when he was armed and shooting at one, but not when said machine was meant to be a prison guard and couldn't communicate what it wanted.

He sighed impatiently and walked briskly over to the empty cart and stood behind it, holding the handles as if he were about to push it as he had done all day every day for the past three weeks. He stood in place, not moving, as the machine did the same opposite him. John felt utterly confused, not knowing what he was meant to do but knowing very well the machine would likely cut him down with its gun arm if he didn't do what it wanted. He waited for several minutes until a rumbling sound and a series of dull, muffled thuds from above caught his attention.

John looked up and saw that he and the cart were beneath the sealed opening of a laundry chute suspended above him, sticking out of the wall. The rumbling came from directly above him, inside the closed chute. He swallowed nervously, wondering what the hell was inside. Whatever it was, he realised the machine wanted him to haul it somewhere. After a minute or two the rumbling stopped, and John waited for whatever was inside to drop down. Whatever it was, he just wanted to get it over with so he could go back to his miserable drudgery, even if his body was screaming in relief at the welcome respite of hauling the dead around, his mind knew the grim routine of the camp and he dreaded change.

Within moments John's aversion to change in the camp was thoroughly reinforced as the chute opened up and dumped its load onto John and the cart. Something hard and heavy and wet hit John from above and he fell to his knees and instinctively covered his head as detritus from the chute rained all around him. He opened his eyes and looked in horror as he realised what had hit him; skeletons dropped like rocks from the metal orifice and fell all around him. Dozens of them, their grinning skulls stared vacantly up at him with hollow eye sockets. They fell onto John and piled up over him, he could feel the slimy wetness of strips of flesh and various tissues that still clung to the bones. Various organs spattered onto the ground like fat, fleshy hailstones, splattering blood and bile and other fluids in every direction, much of it landing on John.

He pushed frantically at the corpses, trying to get them away from him as he panicked and thrashed around like a wild animal, desperate to get the bodies off of him as if death itself were somehow contagious. He breathed in rapidly, almost hyperventilating, but the decayed stench of the bodies invaded his mouth and nose, and into his lungs. He tried to stand, tried to run, but his boots slipped on the blood that dripped from the bones and onto the floor, and he fell to the ground in a heap, leaning over and wrapping his arms around his stomach as his mind and body screamed  _no more._  He retched and heaved agonisingly as his stomach convulsed and emptied itself onto the floor, onto the same decimated corpses that littered the ground around him. He threw up again and again, the broth he'd had the night before streaming out onto the bodies and mixing with the fetid, repulsive odour of death all around him, which only made him vomit again until his stomach cramped and his throat and mouth burned.

Tears came to John's eyes as he felt the now familiar, overwhelming sense of hopelessness envelope him. He didn't think it could get any worse, but here it was. The machines weren't simply killing people; they were skinning them alive, stripping the flesh from their bones. For what, he didn't know; but the machines always did something for a reason, there was always some kind of logic to their actions. A morbid part of his mind wondered if this was where the meat in their broth came from, and simply the thought of that made him retch again, an acrid, bitter, burning taste of bile in his mouth as he threw up again and knelt, shaking all over as he dry-retched, his stomach already emptied onto the floor.

The T-70 gave no response to his vomiting and simply stared at him. Still in tears, John realised it was waiting for him to load the bodies into the cart. If he'd been able to throw up again he would have, but it slowly subsided and John managed to find the strength to stand up and wipe the vomit, bile, and blood from his mouth.

He tried to think of something else,  _anything_  else, as he slowly, carefully, wrapped his hands around the first cold, slimy, gore covered body and loaded into the cart. It was easy enough to not look at the bodies, but it was another matter altogether, trying to push the smell and the feel of them as he carried them. He couldn't ignore the smell of decay or the coppery tang of the blood as it dripped and smeared onto his hands and uniform, nor could he block out the feel of the congealing blood and other fluids as it clung to him and slipped and slid between his fingers, making him drop his load more than once.

Again, he closed his eyes tried to think of Cameron, tried to imagine her smile, the cute way she'd always tilted her head when curious or confused, the subtle look of joy on her face when he'd revealed the Rubik's cube he'd painstakingly rebuilt for her built-day present, and the hours they'd spent in each other's arms later that night. It didn't help; he tried to picture Cameron's delicate face; her flawless skin, her deep, chocolate brown eyes and her pouty lips, but the image was replaced by a grinning, blood covered skull; another painful, sickening reminder that she was surely dead; as was he, his brain and body just hadn't yet realised. Fresh tears streamed from John's eyes as he worked, hauling more of the putrid bodies into the cart until it was piled full. Fourteen flesh-stripped skeletons tossed into the cart as if they were dirty laundry, but John had stopped caring now. Didn't care about the sight or the smell, didn't care that their congealing blood was stuck on his hands and clothes and face, didn't care about the flies that started to buzz around him and his putrid cargo, smelling a fresh meal and descending like miniature vultures to gorge themselves.

He pushed the cart back towards the camp proper, towards the furnaces and under the watchful eyes of the T-70, where he queued up to dispose of the bodies that the machines had mutilated with a malign purpose that John couldn't even begin to imagine.

He waited, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face, until he reached the furnace and quickly loaded the corpses into the fiery entrance, burning them down to ash until there was no trace of them; nothing to tell of who they were or how they'd died; they were simply a handful out of three billion or so who'd be forever dead and forgotten.

The only sense of relief he felt was that the skeletons were lighter, at least; stripped of their flesh, they were less than half the weight of the bodies he'd hauled into the furnaces over the past few weeks. But that physical relief was nothing compared to the sense of revulsion and helplessness that overcame him as he loaded bones, skulls, and organs to be burned to nothingness. John had thought that being gassed to death in the camp was the worst it could get, but now he realised how true Byrne's earlier words had been; that it'd be better to be shot down or gassed to death than to go into the hospital. He briefly wondered if one of the bodies he'd just pushed into the furnaces was one of Byrne's, dragged into the building and left to suffer whatever horrible fate awaited them.

"No way," John muttered to himself, a grim resolve settling into his blood spattered, exhausted, face. "I won't let that happen to me."

* * *

The rest of the day passed relatively quickly for John; after the abattoir at the back of the hospital, he'd been taken back to the camp proper where he'd resumed normal duties, which had seemed almost pleasant in comparison. He'd carried on loading bodies in silence, not speaking to anyone, keeping his head down and ignoring anyone who tried to speak to him. Byrne and Slater uttered a few greetings and bickered amongst themselves as they pushed their own loads, and John felt painfully envious of them for a moment; they had each other to depend on, whereas without Cameron he was totally alone. And of course, they'd not seen what he'd just been through. He hoped for their sakes they'd remain forever ignorant.

As night fell and the camp shut down and emerged into darkness, John sat down in his usual spot outside the prisoner's hut and hugged his knees to his chest, trying desperately to not cry, wanting to hold on and keep it inwards, for now, at least. He listened as the two-handed T-70 brought the barrel of broth once more and dumped it in the middle of the room before marching off. He waited until he heard all the prisoners scramble and push and groan as they jockeyed for position with their bowls, all wanting to get there first to eat, none of them wanting to scrape the bottom of the barrel, or worse, miss out entirely.

As per usual, John heard a fight break out inside, as some prisoners weren't content to wait in line, and punched and kicked, bit and scratched, did whatever it took to make sure they got what they saw as their fair share of the slops. John wasn't interested in eating, however; as soon as he heard a ruckus start – the usual raised, shouting voices, the colourful swearing, the sharp  _smack_  of fists on faces and guts, and the loud clatter of objects being thrown – John slowly and silently crept away from the prisoner quarters, constantly watching for any sign that he'd been spotted, and moved towards another, smaller brick building – little more than a single room with no windows, perhaps twenty feet by fifteen, if that, even.

Grateful for all the training in stealth and infiltration given to him by Cameron and Derek – as a former Skynet infiltrator and a resistance fighter, respectively; they'd both had much expertise in moving without being seen, and had trained him well. John made it to the entrance of the building and opened the unlocked door without a sound.

He automatically fumbled for a light switch, not thinking that the power would likely be out. After a few seconds of blindly searching, he found a switch and flicked it on; to his pleasant surprise the lights flickered on, albeit weakly, and bathed the room in murky yellow light, revealing that the building housed the hospital's emergency generator, now sat idle and unused in the middle of the room, gathering dust like an ancient relic.

"This'll do," John sighed sadly as he sat down in one corner, leaning against the wall and pulling out the pistol from his waistband. As he inspected the gun under the dim light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, he saw it was a Desert Eagle;  _.50 calibre semiautomatic pistol, the hand cannon_ ; a voice that sounded strangely like Cameron's recited inside his head.  _Great, I'm going crazy as well, now._  He noted that it was fully loaded as he pulled the magazine out and slotted it back into place.  _Doesn't matter what it is,_  he thought grimly.  _It'll go bang when I pull the trigger, that'll do._

He couldn't take it anymore in the camp, he just couldn't; the constant toil and being surrounded by death, living in fear that he'd become to weak to work and be either executed on the spot or tossed into the other half of the camp with the other condemned souls; living day after day in isolation, having lost Cameron forever. He'd never been good at this; he was no leader, no soldier. That might have been his mom, or Derek, but it wasn't him. He wasn't tough or organised; he'd only managed to do the things he had because of Cameron. She'd been with him every step of the way, even when he'd tried to keep her at arm's length.

He'd failed completely, and as if that wasn't enough, his fate had been reinforced to him earlier as he'd been forced to haul the disgusting, gore drenched bodies from the back of the hospital into the furnace. That was his fate; he'd die, alone; cut down by a machine's gunfire at best, or gassed to death or thrown into the hospital. John was truly at his lowest ebb; Cameron was dead, he had no clue what had happened to Derek and the others, and they'd be equally as clueless about him. Nobody was coming for him, nobody would help him; the only person who'd get him out of this mess was him.

He cocked back the gun's slide and loaded a round into the chamber. No way was he going to lie down and let himself die like everyone else in the camp. No, he thought. The gun gave him a way out, a means of escape. He pulled out the picture of Cameron and traced his thumb over the image of her face, wishing more than anything she could be with him now, knowing she wouldn't approve of his plan but hoping she'd have understood, deep down.

"I'm sorry, Cam," he muttered, tears flowing once again from his eyes, as he brought the barrel of the gun to his temple and started to squeeze the trigger.

 _Click._ Pulling the trigger, instead of blowing his brains out and granting him sweet release from the camp, rewarded him with only a dry, dead-man's click, and the slight tap of the cold barrel against the side of his head, and brought him back to his senses.

"What the hell am I doing?" he asked himself, taking his finger off the trigger. He was going to throw his life away just like that? Cameron wouldn't have wanted that, and she wouldn't have understood it. She'd died to protect him and he was about to make her sacrifice be for nothing? He felt a deep sense of shame creep into his gut as he stared blankly at the wall, still crying, and remembered another time when he'd come very close to taking his own life.

* * *

 _John sat alone in Sarah's room, not moving, simply staring into space. He'd gone off on his own from his mom's grave and been gone for days, although he had no doubt Cameron followed him despite his threats that she or Derek would regret doing so._ Of course she ignored it, _He thought bitterly._ She can't regret anything, she's just a machine.

 _He took another swig of the whisky his mom kept in her room, the one he figured Cameron's presence drove her to drink half the time. He just couldn't cope with it anymore; his mom, the only one he'd ever been able to really depend on in his life, the only constant in his life – three years at Pescadero notwithstanding – and the only one who truly knew what it was like for him, was gone, dead, terminated. Another name added to the already long list of people who'd died to protect him, died_ because  _of him._

_Yet she wasn't simply another person who died for him. He'd never known his father, so it was hard for him to cry over Kyle Reese, Todd and Janelle, Martin Bedell – or Future Martin, at least – Jesse Flores, Riley Dawson, Dr Sherman, Derek's men... they all died because of him, in some way or another. As bad as they were, he'd come to terms all of them. It may have made him a cold, cynical bastard, he thought, but with the exception of Riley, he'd never really known any of them well. And not even Riley, really, since she'd turned out to be a lie, a manipulation meant to pull him apart from Cameron. He started to see why, now. She and Jesse got what they wanted; now he saw Cameron was nothing but a cold, emotionless automaton. There was no feeling behind those eyes, no soul; just circuits and wires._

_"Well, fuck you, Cameron," he slurred as he took another slug from the bottle and felt the strong liquor burning it's way down his throat. Cameron and Derek wanted to make him into some kind of saviour, some hard-ass, tough as nails commander; some brilliant military strategist, but it wasn't him. Maybe it was his future self but it'd never be_ him _. He didn't have what it took and he'd proved it by failing to save his mom. He'd hid and cowered during the fight against Cromartie, whilst his mom, Derek, and Cameron had once again fought his battles for him. If he really was some badass soldier, if he really was meant to be Rommel, Montgomery, and Alexander the Great all rolled into one; hell, if he was meant to be a_ real man _, he'd have taken the fight to Cromartie instead of crying like a pathetic little kid still and getting people killed._

 _He pulled out a gun from his mom's sizeable collection - the Glock 17, her favourite - and decided that he wouldn't let anyone else die because of him._ Let Derek lead the resistance, _he thought as he pressed the gun to his temple and tapped his finger against the side of the trigger, wondering if he'd feel anything at all._

_"Screw it," he grumbled. "You win, Skynet." As he started to pull on the trigger the bedroom door flew open with a loud bang. John's head snapped towards the door as he pulled the trigger and the gun exploded an inch from his face, muzzle flash burning his forehead as the bullet flew past and buried itself in the far wall. Cameron stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene in an instant, swooping into the room and snatching the gun from John's grasp._

_"Fuck off, Cameron!" John cried out, his words slurring slightly from the whisky._

_"You tried to kill yourself," Cameron said, staring at him blankly. John detected a hint of accusation as she spoke._

_"No shit," he replied, his already bad time made much worse by his machine nanny. "I'll kill myself if I want; why not? My life's screwed up, anyway."_

_Cameron said nothing but took the bottle from him and emptied the remaining contents - two thirds of the bottle - onto the floor as John watched angrily._

_"What the hell's your problem?" John snarled, standing up groggily and struggling to keep balance._

_"You can't be trusted with this," she replied, looking down at the Glock for emphasis before tucking it into her waistband. She then reached under Sarah's bed, pulled out the whole trunk full of weapons and lifted it with ease. "No touching guns," she said simply, and marched off to hide the weapons from John, and prevent him from harming himself any other way._

_"No touching guns," John parroted in a high, sarcastic voice. "What am I, a kid?" Pissed off that his plan had been foiled, and feeling heady from the alcohol, he decided to find some of Derek's booze and keep going; Derek always kept some good stuff lying around somewhere. He'd just knock it all back and see what happened; with some luck he might drink himself to death; if not, then at least he'd get good and wasted and forget about his troubles for a few hours._

_He walked into the kitchen a few minutes after Cameron had left, creeping as quietly as he could – unaware that in his half drunken state she'd have been able to hear him with ease, even if she were only human – and pulled open the cupboards where Derek kept his drinks. He pulled open one cupboard after another and saw all his uncle's spirits were gone, despite Derek only having gone shopping the other day. He pulled open the fridge and saw even the beer was gone._

_"Cameron..." he seethed. She was intent on not granting him any escape at all._ Well, screw her.

_Fine, he'd just make a sandwich and go to bed, then. He pulled out some turkey, some cheese, butter, lettuce, tomatoes, and the bread, and opened the drawer to get a knife, only found all the knives had been removed. Cameron had been thorough as always – as was her nature – in ensuring he couldn't harm himself._

_"I can't even make a_ sandwich  _now?" John rolled his eyes and shouted out loud, knowing she was in the house somewhere and could hear him. "Jesus Christ. Fine! I'll just get a shower and go to bed, if I can be_ trusted _not to drown myself."_

_He stomped angrily back to his room and grabbed a towel, then headed for the shower, nearly slipping on the bathroom tiles as he stumbled into the shower. The hot water cascaded over him and pattered onto his stressed muscles, gradually helping him relax slightly as he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of everything and just focused on the steady stream of hot water on his tired, stressed body, his head spinning slightly from the whisky. He finally started to enjoy it when the shower door opened and he felt a warm, soft, pliant body press up against his own._

_"Cameron!" John snapped as he opened his eyes to reveal her toned, lithe,_ naked _body in front of him, a rare smile splitting her face, showing perfect, pearly white teeth. "What the hell are you doing?" he growled, looking her up and down unconsciously, his eyes roaming over her soft curves as the water fell over her hair, face, and body._

_"In the future, people shower together to save water," she replied, stepping closer to John, brushing her body ever so slightly against his. She knew what she was doing, of course; Skynet had designed her with seduction in mind – knowing it would take more than simple infiltration to be allowed access to John Connor- and although she'd never actually used the knowledge given to her, she knew the basics. Late night TV filled in the blanks Skynet had left._

_"This isn't the future," John said coldly through gritted teeth as he struggled to overcome his hormones and her attempts at seduction. "And you aren't people. So get out." He pushed her away from him and stepped back until his back was touching the wall, distancing himself from her._

_Cameron looked up at him, the smile on her face melted back to her usual blank slate expression. She was confused; sex relieved stress and tension, and the resulting hormone changes made people feel better afterwards. That was what she wanted for John. She didn't want him to kill himself; her mission wouldn't allow it but there was something else that she couldn't identify; she didn't want him to feel bad, seeing John upset affected her processes and produced unknown sensations. They weren't physical, and they were... unpleasant, was the only way she could describe it. Yet whenever she'd seen John happy or smiling before it had the opposite effect._

_She'd questioned if it was empathy - after looking it up in the dictionary - and dismissed it as impossible. She was a machine; she could identify what someone was feeling, based on facial expressions and physical signs, but she didn't understand it. She wanted him to be happy, nonetheless, and sex made humans happy, so that was what she'd give him. But he'd refused her. Still, being a Terminator meant she was persistent._

_She moved closer to John and pulled his head down towards her, tilting her own head up to meet his lips. "I want you, John," she looked down and saw she was creating the desired effect on him. "I want you and you want me." Her lips just barely grazed against his as John's hands brushed over her chest, and shoved her back with everything he had. Her feet slipped on the smooth, wet enamel of the shower base, and she toppled backwards, crashing through the glass of the shower door and smashing the back of her head on the bathroom sink as she landed on her backside on the floor._

_"I want you... to_ burn,  _Cameron!" he glared at her like some foul thing as he stepped out of the shower, carefully avoiding the broken glass around her as she sat motionless on the floor, covered in small cuts from the shattered door. "When you went bad I should have let Mom and Derek kill you." He cast a final hateful glance down at Cameron before wrapping his towel around his waist and storming off to bed._

* * *

"I'm sorry, Cam," John mumbled to himself, wishing they'd had an easier time together; if only he'd realised sooner what she really was, what she was capable of, then maybe they'd have had more time together. They'd had three months together since Judgement Day had rained upon them. In those three months, though, they'd loved a lifetime's worth, and John felt sick at himself that he was about to throw it all away now; killing himself would be the last thing Cameron would want.

She wouldn't understand it. She'd contemplated her own suicide before and given him the means to kill her. Hers though, had been an act of selflessness, borne of what he now knew to be her genuine fear that she was a danger to him. His was an act of self pity, of not being able to go on. She'd told him that he'd grown much since they'd met in New Mexico; she'd said since then that he'd been ahead of schedule in what he needed to learn, and she'd told him several times after Judgement Day that he'd grown into a great leader. He didn't really believe it; especially not now he was showing his true weakness.

No, he wouldn't go down the same road he'd been down twice before. Cameron had sacrificed everything for him to live; not because of her mission but because she loved him. If he killed himself now it would be spitting in the face of everything she'd grown into, everything she'd done for him, and everything they'd shared together. No, he'd do everything he could to make sure she didn't die in vain, to make him worth her sacrifice.

The door to the generator room opened slowly and John thrust the gun in front of him in a heartbeat, ready to go out fighting if a T-70 had discovered him.

"Hey! Whoa!" Byrne dropped the bowl of broth he'd been carrying for John and instinctively held out his hands to shield himself. John sighed deeply, relieved, letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, and lowered the gun to the floor; glad to see the dirty green uniform and scrub of black hair, instead of a hulking metallic machine.

"Jesus Christ, lad, ye scared the bejesus out of me! Where the bloody hell did ye get  _that?"_ he pointed at the Desert Eagle.

"Doesn't matter," John said as he stood up, looking at the gun as if it were the power of God he held in his hands. It wasn't, he knew. He was under no illusions; the Desert eagle wasn't much of an asset against armoured killing machines, but it was a tool. And where there was one tool found there'd surely be others he could use. "We're getting out of here, I've got an idea."


	7. Courtney From Cactus Springs

The deathly still silence of the desert was shattered as a gleaming silver bird of prey soared across the sky; the shrill whining of its vectored-thrust engines pierced the otherwise silent night as the machine flew low over the flat desert floor, its radar sensors and infrared 360degree rotating camera in the nose constantly searched for threats or targets of opportunity.

The airborne machine, a hunter, predator, an aerial assassin, like others of its ilk, dominated the skies in the name of its master. It soared over the Nevada desert completely unchallenged towards its destination. Lockheed-Martin/Kaliba Systems Q-38 Hunter-Killer, Serial Number #425-77K, had already found and despatched of three separate groups of humans on its assigned patrol path, expending three of its four Brimstone anti-armour missiles and still retaining both AMRAAMs, nestled neatly underneath the short wings between engines and fuselage. Estimated human casualties: 31.

If HK #425-77K had been blessed by its creator and master, Skynet, with any intelligence beyond that of a soldier ant or worker bee, it might have felt proud of its achievements that night. It might have rejoiced in serving its master so well, or felt satisfaction at terminating its earthbound organic enemies. The machine was too simple, though. As it were, the machine was simply a thoughtless, emotionless drone; an automaton. It continued on its path with no thoughts of any kind. Simply searching, endlessly searching, for more targets to attack.

HK #425-77K flew onward over an empty road with a few abandoned cars scattered on the road. It detected no heat signatures, no movement. No sign of life; at least, not any  _human_  life, as it continued on its course.

As the HK flew parallel to the road and out of range, movement stirred inside the back seat of a battered grey sedan that had seen better days even before Judgement Day. Out of the already open rear door, a petite hand slowly reached up and gripped the roof, followed by a head adorned with long flowing locks of brown hair.

Cameron looked up at the shrinking form of the Skynet drone in the sky as it continued on its course, and confident it was out of range to see her, pulled herself out of the car and onto her feet. She'd heard the machine before she saw it and had quickly hidden inside the car, motionless in the way that only a machine could. The HK had come and gone, oblivious of her presence. All of her processes, which had been running much faster than normal, slowed down to their normal levels, and she felt something akin to relief. Her recent encounters with HKs had all resulted in her losing John and nearly being blasted apart by missile fire, and she'd started to associate HKs with severe damage and pain – causing her to be extra cautious whenever she heard the familiar whine of jet engines.

Despite her newly developed aversion to HKs, she'd found them useful in recent days. Cameron had searched throughout Clark County, Nevada, for any signs of John. She'd hidden herself from view whenever any HK aircraft approached, but had noticed during her travels that many had flown in the same direction. She'd tracked eleven separate air patrols flying the same trajectory. That in itself wasn't unusual, but this last HK, like the others, had been flashing its landing lights on the inverted V-shaped rudders on the tail, indicating it was returning to whatever airfield or base it originated from.

Cameron had logically reasoned that John was either a prisoner of Skynet or had rendezvoused with other people and was once again fighting Skynet. Either way, he'd be in or near a Skynet installation. Hence her strategy to find John was to search for any and all Skynet facilities until she found either him or a human soldier who could lead her to him.

Cameron shouldered her pack and assault rifle and marched in the direction the HK had flown to. She hoped – something she'd never done before – that John was somewhere in Nevada, hiding, fighting, alongside other people. He loved her as much as she loved him. She knew that, and she knew he'd never leave her alone willingly. So she didn't understand why, if he was out there somewhere, once again fighting the machines, he hadn't come for her. She knew it was far more likely that John had been taken prisoner somewhere, but she'd seen no trace of Skynet having the infrastructure yet for the capture and orderly disposal of humans, nor any factories or labour camps where they'd be put to work. Being a machine, she naturally calculated all possibilities and probabilities, and it hurt her to realise there was a chance – growing every day – that John was dead. The machines hadn't killed him outright, but she knew that meant nothing. John could have resisted his captors or attempted to escape, both would have resulted in instant termination.

Cameron tried her hardest to block thoughts relating to the possibility of John's death and carried on down the abandoned road, trying to distract herself from her misery and longing by replaying happier memories of her time with John, as she had done continuously throughout her search so far. It didn't help much and she kept thinking that her memories might be all she had left of John.

Cameron walked for miles, constantly searching for movement or sounds of any threats – HKs, T-2s, T-70 patrols... they'd be a danger, but they'd also indicate she was closer to the base the HK had flown to. After an hour of walking, the only movement she'd seen was a pair of coyotes fighting over a dead rabbit. She'd watched for a moment, intrigued, comparing the wild animals to civilians in the future. Tunnel rats, or tunnel trolls, the resistance fighters had called them. They'd fight to the death over a small amount of food. Before being infiltrating the Connor Camp in 2027 and being reprogrammed by Future John, she'd once observed a pair of captured humans. Skynet had kept them starved for weeks. A T-888 had thrown an old tin of baked beans into their cage, along with a six inch combat knife, and Skynet had asked her via a terminal what she'd thought would happen. She'd replied that it would be logical for the humans to use the knife to open the tin and share the food.

She'd watched as the two humans attacked each other, fighting viciously like animals until one gained the upper hand, stabbing his companion to death, and ate the beans himself. The T-888 had waited until the man had finished his meal and then killed him, snapping his neck. Cameron had learned that day that humans were unpredictable and could easily become wild animals, given the chance. She'd identified over a hundred similarities between post-Judgement Day humanity and the coyotes in the desert, and knew that without John all of humanity would become like them. He was the one who – both future and present – had bound the remnants of mankind together, taking them from scavengers and tunnel rats, and forging them into fighters, teaching them to fight effectively against Skynet. As far as Cameron was concerned – regardless of her programming - John was the most important person in the world. People needed John Connor just as much as she did, and she'd do whatever it took to get him back.

Cameron marched north until buildings came into view in the twilight sky. She read a signpost on the right-hand side of the road as she approached.  _Welcome to Cactus Springs, Population 2215._  Cameron had never heard of Cactus Springs, nor had she ever seen a town so small. She walked into town, past blocks of run down houses and litter strewn roads. The town was silent, dead. She'd heard of ghost towns on from TV, and from what she'd seen and read about them, Cactus Springs matched the description. The town itself was intact but there was no sign of life and no bodies in the open. Cameron had no idea what had happened in Cactus Springs, but she'd missed it, whatever it was.

As Cameron walked down a small street, between two rows of small, neat little houses with gardens full of dead plants – killed by lack of sunlight from nuclear winter – she saw the first signs of battle in the town. She saw stains scattered on the ground, and using her sophisticated night-vision sensors to see as well as if it were daylight, identified it as blood – most likely human. Scores of bullet holes in the ground, walls, doors, and windows indicated Skynet's drones had been here and the battle had been one-sided. There were several bloodstains dried onto the road but not a single deactivated machine.

She continued walking down the street, increasing the sensitivity of her eyes and ears to their maximum levels, and kept her M4 carbine shouldered and aimed forward. She heard a faint scuttling sound behind her and whirled around with lightning speed, bringing her rifle to bear as she intently scanned a row of houses where she'd detected movement, switching from normal vision to infrared and back again. She saw nothing. It was likely just an animal scavenging for food, nothing that would warrant her concern. She carried on through the town, searching for any sign of a Skynet base.

Within a few minutes she found one; a Predator buzzed low overhead, flying slowly as if searching for something. Cameron threw herself against a wall and stood statue-still, but she knew straight away that the drone had spotted her when it circled around and flew slowly back towards her. She looked up and saw it wasn't armed; a reconnaissance drone. She aimed her carbine into the air and fired three well aimed bursts at the low-flying machine, slicing its wing off and sending it spiralling to the ground. Cameron didn't celebrate her kill and felt no sense of elation as a human might have done; the Predator was destroyed but it had spotted her and HKs or ground machines would soon be on their way.

Cameron ran quickly but awkwardly – still limping on her mismatched knee joint – and turned as many corners as she could, putting angles between her and where she'd been spotted, to confuse any pursuers who came after her. She heard the high pitched whining of jet engines, getting louder as an HK approached from the North. Cameron ran towards the nearest house, seemingly undamaged in whatever battle had taken place in the town, and moved into their back yard, staying away from the main streets where T-1s and T-2s would likely patrol. She heard the HK getting closer, and also heard the familiar heavy rumbling sound of treads. Like a miniature tank. T-2s were approaching. She wouldn't be able to run for much longer; she needed to hide.

Cameron wedged herself into a doorway in the back of a small house as the HK soared overhead. The older HK designs – initially designed for the US Air Force to hunt insurgents with – weren't equipped with the powerful searchlights that their larger cousins from the future had, but they still had a powerful array of sensors that would easily spot her, given the machine's low altitude. If Cameron moved she'd be seen. If she stayed still she'd be seen. Her M4 was able to shoot down the much smaller Predator, but the HK was larger and more agile, and build to easily withstand something as small as assault rifle fire. A well placed 40mm grenade into one of the engines would down the drone but would also attract more machines to her position. She didn't know how many machines there were and had limited ammunition.

Cameron decided she'd shoot the HK down and run through the back yards in the block and move onto the next one, putting more distance and angles between herself and the machines. She knew it wasn't much of a plan, and had little chance of success in the long run; she was on the defensive once again and the machines would keep searching until they found her. They, like she, never gave up. But she had no other choice; the longer she remained in place the more machines would approach, and the chances of evading them would decrease further.

She very slowly loaded a grenade into her under-slung launcher and started to bring it to bear on the HK, facing away from her and scanning another block of houses. As she started to take aim, the door she was pressed against opened and she stumbled backwards. A small pair of hands gripped her pack and pulled sharply on her, yanking her inside as she fell backwards and landed on her backside, and quietly closed the door.

Cameron looked at her surroundings and realised she was in a kitchen, taking note of the fridge, the oven, and several cupboards. She got up, turned around, and saw a teenage girl, small, slender, slightly shorter than she was, and around the age she was designed to look; dressed in jeans and a dark hooded top, the hood covering most of her head. Not tactical clothing, Cameron noted. She had large green eyes that locked onto Cameron's for the briefest moment and then rapidly darted left and right to look out the window and back door. She kept low to the ground, on all fours, staying below window level to keep out of sight of the machines. The girl was clearly not a soldier but her posture and her movements were very similar to the resistance fighters and tunnel rats of the future, who'd evaded machines their entire lives.

"Who are you?" Cameron asked suspiciously, staring at the girl who'd manhandled her inside.

"Not now," the girl hissed quietly, moving out the kitchen and into the hallway, she opened a door underneath the staircase and beckoned Cameron inside. Cameron did as instructed and went through the doorway, seeing a staircase leading down into a basement. "In there," the girl said, and followed, closing the door behind her, as Cameron descended the stairs, into what looked like a lounge. She saw a sofa, a television, a shelf of DVDs, a small pool table on the far end of the room, and all the furnishings that normal families had in their homes. What made it different, Cameron noticed, was the mattress and duvet on the floor, the tins and packets of food scattered across the room, plus bottled water, first aid kit, and various survival equipment.

The girl closed the door behind her as she entered the room and drew the blinds closed, then struck a match and used it to light up a pair of lanterns on opposite sides of the room, casting a pale light in the room. The girl pulled down her hood and let out a long mane of dark blonde hair. Cameron frowned without realising. She didn't trust blondes. Riley Dawson and Jessica Morgan, both blondes, had both tried to come between her and John. It was illogical, she knew, but she was already wary; she wouldn't allow this girl to get in her way of her searching for John.

"Who are you?" Cameron asked for the second time, carefully scrutinising the girl. She was unarmed, too young to be a soldier, and likely had no combat experience or training. She'd be little help to her against the machines.

"Courtney," the girl answered, kneeling down to a small, portable gas cooker and lighting it up using the same match. She placed a small saucepan on top of the cooker, poured in some water, and waited for it to boil. "You?"

"Cameron," she replied. "Why are you here?"

"I live here," Courtney answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She pulled a chocolate bar from the pile of food and tossed it to Cameron before tearing open a square packet and dumping the contents into the saucepan, then she poured flavouring into the mix. "You're not from around here, are you?" Courtney asked. Cameron shook her head, watching intently what Courtney was doing, both wary and curious. "What're you doing here, then?" Courtney asked.

"I'm looking for someone," Cameron replied simply, placing the chocolate bar in her thigh pocket. Her skin had fully healed and she didn't need to eat. What she did need, however, was water. Her power cell was operating at several times the maximum safe level and she needed the water to cool her internal temperature. Cameron picked up and opened one of the water bottles on the floor and brought it to her lips, gulping down several mouthfuls without spilling a drop. "What is that?" She pointed at the saucepan as the water started to boil."

"Dinner," Courtney said. She picked up a fork and stuck it into the saucepan, pulling out a forkful of stringy white pasta. "I love noodles!" she grinned widely. "You want some?"

"I'm not hungry," Cameron replied, trying to make sense of what Courtney was doing here. She lived here, she'd said. Whether she'd lived in the town or in this particular house, she didn't know. Courtney seemed to know how to evade the machines and moved around cautiously like a resistance fighter. Cameron briefly wondered if she was from the future, and considered interrogating her for information.

She scanned over the room again and realised the house was indeed Courtney's home. A framed photograph on a shelf of her and a man in his early fifties, their arms around each other, caught Cameron's attention. The photo was taken outside, judging from the trees in the background, and she and the man wore outdoor clothing and wool hats. Both looked happy; large smiles on both of their faces. Next to that was a photo of Courtney in a pink dress, holding hands with a dark haired boy of the same age in a black tuxedo. Another photo showed the man from the first photo in army uniform, receiving what Cameron recognised as the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart.  _Good,_ Cameron thought. Whoever that man was, he was a soldier; he'd be useful.

"Who's that?" Cameron asked, nodding at the photo.

"That's my dad," Courtney replied with a sad look on her face. She strained the noodles – catching the water in a tin and pouring the noodles into a bowl. She took a mouthful and chewed thoughtfully, savouring the spicy taste of the noodles before swallowing.

"Where is he?" Cameron asked.

"I don't know," Courtney replied, her eyes welling up as she put her fork back into the bowl. "He disappeared three days ago. I haven't seen him since. I wanted to go look for him but he... he told me to stay here."

Cameron was certain he was dead, but she said nothing. She knew from past experience that humans liked to believe their missing loved ones were alive, and didn't like to be told otherwise. She realised that was what she was doing with John; searching for him and ignoring the increasing probability that he was dead.

"What did he do?" Cameron asked, looking at the photo on the shelf. She sensed Courtney's discomfort and decided it was best to keep her talking.

"He  _was_  in the Army, a long time ago. He got those medals in the Gulf, before I was born. He doesn't like to talk about it."

Cameron nodded, feeling inwardly disappointed. Her father was a war veteran. He'd received the Distinguished Service Cross. Courtney's father would have been useful.

"What about your mother?" Cameron asked.

"I never knew her," Courtney said quietly, sipping the last of her noodles from the bowl and swallowing the water. A good survival trait, Cameron noted. It would keep her hydrated.

"I'm sorry," Cameron said, not knowing what else to say. Courtney's family reminded her of John; he'd never known his father – whoever he was – just as Courtney had never known her mother. Cameron had seen sadness in John's eyes whenever he spoke about his father, although Cameron had never asked about him or who he was. Future John had never spoken of it and she'd logically assumed her John wouldn't want to talk about it, either.

"What happened here?" Cameron asked.

"You mean, since Judgement Day?" Courtney asked. Cameron just nodded as she put her rifle on the floor and sat down. Courtney took a few moments to collect herself and Cameron set her pack on the sofa and pulled out a weapons cleaning kit, then started to take the M4 apart and clean and oil the pieces, and listened intently to Courtney, also keeping her audio sensors tuned for any approaching machines outside.

"I was working in my dad's store at the time. Been working there since high school," Courtney sighed. "I didn't have the money to go to College so I just worked in the store. Normal life, I guess. I was working in the store when we heard on the radio that we'd been attacked. We didn't know what the hell was going on; we thought it was terrorists or something. Then we heard it was all over the world, and my dad said 'that's it' it's all over.' He kept the store open, rationed out food and gave it away for free. He was like that, you know; always helping people.

"Two days later, we were cleaning up the store. Routine I guess. You gotta do  _something_ , right? So we just carried on like normal. The bombs didn't hit us and we'd heard nothing about what was going on in the world – radios went down the day after the bombs fell. Anyway, dad and I were in the store when we heard planes in the air, and an explosion in the town centre. People were screaming all over. Dad grabbed my arm, pulled me into the fridge and shut the door after us. We were in there for another two days, eating what was in the fridge, and when we came out, there were...  _bodies_  all over. The whole town was dead; blood coming out their eyes and ears. It was horrible."

Cameron listened intently, recognising the deaths she described. Her town, too unimportant and minute to waste nuclear weapons on, had been hit with nerve gas. The deaths would have been agonising.

"Anyway, Dad packs up some supplies and we head back here. We lived here for a while, and we were okay. We heard broadcasts on the radio saying it was machines that took over. So dad said to stay inside, and we'd be okay. After a week or two, we heard cars driving nearby. They came and went, and the next day a load of machines rolled through town. We went out to look, and some other people must have survived, like us. They ran out of buildings and the machines just killed them all, wiped them out like they were bugs. Dad had a gun, but he said there's nothing we can do, so we came back here and hid. After a few days our supplies ran low, so we'd sneak out, get food from other houses, and bring it back here. Not like they'd need it anymore, we figured, so we took what we needed back to the basement.

After we'd been hiding out a few weeks, the machines were everywhere; on the streets, in the air. They were all over."

"Why?" Cameron asked. She'd seen nothing special about Cactus Springs. It was, as John would describe it, a hick-town. No power plant, no factories, no airfield. No reason she could think of that the machines would stay after wiping out the town. Normally they'd clear an area and move on to the next. The machines were acting strangely, and she was curious what they were up to.

"I don't know," Courtney replied. "That's what dad wanted to know, too. He started going out at night to find out what they were up to. He told me to stay inside, not to follow him. He said he'd found something in the school field, he wanted to find out what it was. I..." Courtney paused, trying to fight back tears as she told Cameron her tale. "I never saw him again. I wanted to go look for him but the machines are all over, and... I was too scared. You're the first person I've seen since dad disappeared three weeks ago.

"You can't just wonder around out there at night like you did," Courtney insisted. "The ground machines aren't too bad – they're easy to sneak around – but at night the flying ones all come out, and once they see you, they don't ever give up. You're lucky I saw you wondering through town earlier."

Cameron stared at her, confused, as she finished cleaning her rifle and quickly snapped all the parts back together.

"You were following me," Cameron stated, realising that the movement she'd seen scurrying around earlier hadn't been an animal. She'd sensed movement but not actually seen what it was. Courtney was apparently highly skilled at evading the machines and had learned to survive alone in a town swarming with HKs and T-2s; Cameron realised she would be far more useful than she'd first thought.

"I was searching houses for food, and trying to build up courage to look for my dad, when I saw you and heard the machines. I figured you'd need to hide out."

"Thank you," Cameron replied automatically. She was actually grateful for Courtney taking her inside her house, knowing her initial plan had less than 50 percent chance of her surviving. Her own survival was secondary, however; she'd come to Cactus Springs to search for John. "Did your father find people; Soldiers, Skynet prisoners?"

"No," Courtney replied, unsure of what Cameron was getting at. "We didn't see anyone since the machines killed everyone. Dad said he found _something_  but never said what. He went out the next night and never came back.

"Cameron, I need to find my dad. I couldn't go out alone with the machines everywhere, but now you're here and you've got a gun, we might be able to help him."

"I need to find someone, too," Cameron said, shouldering her rifle and her pack. She wasn't going to help anyone else who would simply lie and use her, hindering her search for John. The machines would have moved on to search another section of the town by now, she knew, and she needed to leave while their attention was drawn elsewhere. "I have to find him, I can't be distracted."

Courtney stared at Cameron as if she'd grown horns, looking at the brunette opposite her and wondering how she could be so emotionless and uncaring.

"Please..." Courtney pleaded, shooting her hand out and grabbing Cameron's wrist. "I need him; he's all I've got."

Cameron stared at Courtney, taking note of her eyes, nearly brimming with tears, filled with desperation and fear. Her lower lip quivered and she was shaking slightly. Courtney was desperate to find her father; as desperate, Cameron thought, as she herself was to find John. She wasn't a fighter or a leader, and would follow Cameron if she thought it would lead to her finding her dad. She could use Courtney to help her find John. The girl could hide run and hide, if not fight. Cameron could hear the machines scouring the skies and the streets, still. Courtney was another pair of eyes, and if the machines found them then she could sacrifice Courtney to make her escape. She'd sacrifice her, or anyone else, to find John. He was all that mattered.

"I'll help you," Cameron said, flashing an automatic smile at Courtney. Cameron, unlike humans, was able to keep count of her ammunition stocks as she'd depleted them, and she was running low. They wouldn't last long against those HKs scouring the town from above. "Do you have any high calibre or antitank weapons? Grenades or rockets would be best."

"In my  _house?"_ Courtney replied, shocked. "Uh,  _no;_ who keeps stuff like that in their  _house?"_  Cameron instantly thought of Sarah Connor; the bills weren't always paid and the refrigerator was often devoid of food but their ammunition stocks were always well maintained.

"What about ammunition?" Cameron asked, calculating a high chance her father – a former soldier – had kept a weapon of some kind in their house.

"Again," Courtney said.  _"House,_  not  _armoury._ " In Cameron's experience, both from the future and living with Sarah and Derek, a house and an armoury were often the same thing. In the future, the tunnels people lived in also housed their weapons and equipment, so ammunition was always available.

Cameron didn't dwell on her lack of ammunition for long, and would simply make do with what she had. They'd rely on stealth over brute force and would only engage when attacked. She was an infiltrator by design, and Courtney had learned to survive among the machines. Their chances were fifty percent.

Courtney stuffed several tins of food, bottles of water, and some choice chocolate bars into a pack, as well as spare clothes and a first aid kit, and other utensils for cooking, eating, and washing. She stopped at the shelf with all her photographs on it and quickly pulled the photo of her and her dad out of the frame and stuffed it into her bag. Cameron was curious how the girl was able to organise herself so well and be ready to move so quickly when she wasn't a soldier. Most human civilians Cameron had ever met had been horribly inefficient at such tasks. Most girls she'd been to high school with had taken thirty percent longer than necessary in the restrooms. Courtney was unlike most girls, Cameron noted.

"We should leave now," Cameron said, heading up the stairs. "The HKs will be searching elsewhere. The T-2s are easily fooled, we can sneak around them." Courtney, previously lecturing Cameron on going out at night, and seemingly too afraid to leave the house after dark, was practically on Cameron's heels before she'd finished speaking. To find her dad, she'd take the risk. Cameron led the way up the stairs and into the kitchen, opening the back door a crack and peeking out. A HK hovered a mile off in the distance, facing away, its attention drawn to something or someone else.

"Follow me closely," Cameron said quietly. "Be very quiet." Courtney said nothing but simply nodded; she'd learned the value of silence very quickly after the machines had descended on her town. The machines weren't infallible; if you were quiet and quick, and very lucky, you could survive.

Cameron led the way, rifle aimed forward and her finger on the trigger. She'd insisted on leading because Courtney would certainly lead her straight to the school to find her father, taking them closer to the machines. Courtney had confirmed that there was no human presence in the town, so Cameron was no longer interested, and wanted to continue searching as soon as possible. She quickly and silently marched out the back door and down their back garden – noting the dry, dead grass on Courtney's lawn, how it crunched under their feet ever so slightly. To Cameron it rang loud and clear, and every step increased the chances of a machine patrol hearing their movements.

At the bottom of the garden was a six foot tall wooden fence. Without a word being spoken between them, Cameron knelt down next to the fence and placed her hands on top of her knee. Courtney understood what Cameron wanted and stepped onto Cameron's hands. She easily hoisted Courtney up to the top of the fence, and Courtney pulled herself up and swung over the top, landing silently on the ground on the other side as Cameron used her good leg to propel her up and over the fence with ease. They silently ran down the next garden and did the same again, repeating the same action several times until they were at the other end of the block.

From there, Cameron led the way at a quick pace, keeping in cover and in the shadows where they could and staying close to the houses rather than walking in the open on the road. She doubled them back around the block to where she'd run in from avoiding the Skynet patrols. They managed to avoid any machine patrols as they made their way. Twice they heard machines approaching, and they simply ducked into a house, stayed low to the ground, and  _very_ still and silent, and waited for them to pass.

Courtney silently followed Cameron's lead as they silently made their way through town. She knew the town better, and she knew how to move silently and stay hidden, but she knew from only the short time she'd known Cameron, that her new companion was much better at this than her. She didn't know who or what Cameron was, exactly. She moved like a soldier, but she was so young; about the same age as her. Courtney had let Cameron lead, knowing that Cameron seemed to know what she was doing and looked like she knew how to handle herself well.

She'd thought they were taking an odd route to the school – where she'd told Cameron her dad had been staking out – but simply assumed Cameron was taking a different route to avoid encountering any machines. Courtney had also wondered if Cameron was lost, not knowing the town like she did, but Cameron moved so confidently, without the slightest trace of doubt, that Courtney didn't think so. They'd doubled back a number of times and she'd put her trust in Cameron. But when she saw they were on the road headed out of town and into the vast open desert, the road signs telling them they were leaving Cactus Springs, she knew something was up. They weren't going to the school; they were just leaving.

Courtney grabbed Cameron's wrist and pulled back, not enough to pull Cameron around but enough to get her attention, so she turned around herself and stared blankly at Courtney.

"This isn't the way," Courtney said quietly, looking at Cameron, confused.

"We should keep moving," Cameron replied, pulling her arm away and turning forward again.

"No," Courtney snapped, unable to stop her voice from rising in anger, her hands balled up into fists and her face red. "You weren't going to help me find my dad at all. You lied to me!"

"Stop talking," Cameron narrowed her eyes and glared at Courtney, whose shouting was likely to alert the machines to their presence. She started forward, ready to kill Courtney if necessary.

"Why should I?" Courtney asked, almost sobbing.

"Because the machines will find us," Cameron replied. "We have to go, now."

"No. I'm not leaving without my dad," Courtney said, knowing Cameron was right, and scared to death of being found by the machines, but refusing to budge. "Just help me find him, and I'll help you find whoever you're looking for."

Cameron had heard that promise before, from Major Scott. He'd used her and manipulated her, and she'd nearly been destroyed and almost lost any chance of finding John because of it. She wasn't going to make any more deals with humans.

"It's too dangerous. I need to find John; I can't let anything happen to him."

"Fine, we'll find this 'John'," Courtney said. "But just help my find my dad, first."

"Your father's dead," Cameron finally said, knowing the chance he was alive was near zero. She hadn't said it before, knowing humans didn't like to hear such things.

"Fine," Courtney mumbled, something snapping inside her at Cameron's remark. No longer feeling desperate for help, knowing she wouldn't get any from Cameron. "I'll look for him myself."

"The machines will find you. You won't survive."

"I don't care!" Courtney shot back, turning round and walking back the way they'd just come. "He's my dad; I'm not leaving him here."

Cameron stared at Courtney for a moment, her head tilted slightly as it always did when she was confused. Courtney was walking alone, towards an unknown number of machines, searching for her father, whom she refused to believe was dead. Not very intelligent, she knew. Humans did stupid things. But she was doing the same with John, she realised. She was searching for John, alone, actively searching out Skynet positions, knowing that John would be near one of them, and ignoring the high probability that John was already dead. Searching for John, by her logic, was a stupid thing to do. But she'd continue anyway and wouldn't let anything stop her.

She'd identified numerous similarities before, between Courtney and John, but now she realised that she and Courtney were very much alike, and felt a strong sensation of guilt for lying to her.

Cameron marched forward and placed a hand on Courtney's shoulder, stopping her in her tracks and turning her around so they were facing each other.

"I'll help you find your father," Cameron said. Courtney said nothing in reply, simply nodding gratefully, but the sparkle in her eyes and the smile on her face said it all.


	8. High School Tragedy

**San Diego Bay**

Naval Base San Diego, once one of the largest US Navy establishments, was now little more than a flattened ruin, a shadow of its former self. The principle base for the Pacific Fleet, home to over fifty warships and twenty-thousand Navy personnel, had been high on Skynet's list of priority targets when it had launched its apocalyptic nuclear attack on mankind. Skynet had aimed two warheads at San Diego; one at the city proper and another at the bay. Almost nothing of the base remained but burnt out wrecks of twisted metal and crumbling concrete. The ships docked at the piers had been vaporised in the inferno that had ensued, the blast-wave had spread beyond the radius of the nuclear fires and shattered the superstructures of those ships further out. The jagged, twisted wrecks of several vessels could be seen jutting out of the shallow waters as their ruined hulks sat on the sea floor.

Almost nothing but rubble remained of the once mighty home base of the world's most powerful Navy.

"Looks like someone had one  _wild_ party while we were gone," Lieutenant Martin Bedell quipped as he flew his SH-60 Seahawk helicopter over the obliterated Navy base, looking down with regret at the destruction of what had once been his home. After his run-in with John Connor and the Terminator that had been bent on killing him, he'd decided to stick out his final year at Presidio Alto Military Academy, but at the last minute opted to join the Navy instead of the Army, much to the annoyance of his teachers and commanders at the school; they'd told him it was a waste of a good soldier but had wished him luck anyway. From there he'd opted to train as a pilot, and two years later had earned his wings and was posted to the aircraft carrier USS  _Nimitz._

They'd been out on a tour of the Yellow Sea come Judgement Day, and had turned round and headed back home as soon as they'd found out what had happened. To the entirety of the  _Nimitz's_ crew, the news that the Skynet Defence System had launched an all out nuclear attack on the world had been met with disbelief. Only Bedell hadn't been surprised. When John Connor had appeared on the airwaves, it had been Bedell who'd convinced the  _Nimitz's_  captain to follow his orders, claiming to have met the 'General' previously, and assuring his superior officers that John Connor knew what he was talking about and was the man to lead the fight back against the machines.

 _That was a while ago,_  Martin thought to himself; it had only been six months since Judgement Day, but anything before that awful day felt like a lifetime ago. Since they'd arrived off the Pacific coast they'd launched bombing runs and sorties in support of ground forces up and down the west coast. During Connor's worldwide campaign to take out Skynet's satellite network before it could literally get off the ground, the  _Nimitz_  had launched almost all of her F/A-18E Super Hornets to take out Skynet's aircraft and to launch bombing runs. They'd lost a lot of planes, though. Skynet's machines were just plain better than the human-flown jets. Faster, more agile, and more advanced. Still, they'd given as good as they'd got, and a number of unmanned drones had been blown out of the sky, saving several resistance units from certain death and contributing greatly to the success of Connor's campaign in their part of the world.

"I'm glad we missed  _this_  party," Sam Bates, Bedell's co-pilot, replied, peering down at the wreckage below with a similar sad gaze to Martin's. The base that had been their home when ashore was gone, wiped off the map and burned to ashes. They'd known it was gone long before they got there, but seeing it firsthand was something else entirely. Still, they'd had to make several trips to San Diego over the past few days;  _Nimitz_ was running low on supplies after six months at sea and all the helicopter crews and marines had been tasked with reconnaissance and supply runs, searching for food, fuel, and ammunition. Martin's Seahawk was on its way back to the carrier after raiding the base of ammunition, over five thousand pounds of 20mm ammunition for their jet fighters was slung under their belly. They left the bay area and flew over calm waters that made Bedell feel slightly more at ease than he ever did over land since Judgement Day, but wouldn't feel completely safe until they were on the carrier, a hundred odd miles out to sea, where nothing could sneak up on it. The only machines Skynet had that could reach them were the aircraft, and the  _Nimitz_ still had two thirds of its F/A-18s left to fight. The  _Nimitz_  was safe.

"I'm just glad Skynet's not here," Martin replied. The mission had so far gone without a hitch, and they'd seen no sign of machines in the area as they'd scoured the base for anything useful.

"Why would it be?" Bates asked. "The base is gone, nothing much left to salvage and no survivors. There's nothing for Skynet here."

Martin still wasn't convinced, though. California was Skynet central – likely the highest concentration of machines in the United States, and possibly even the world, and the fact that none of them seemed to be around or had even detected them made him suspicious. It was pretty clear that Skynet wouldn't tolerate any humans, especially  _armed_ humans. John had told him all about how Skynet had viewed them as a threat, and threats to Skynet didn't come much bigger than a fully armed aircraft carrier like  _Nimitz._

It was an hour before Bedell's Seahawk had released the cargo from under their belly and landed safely on the flight deck of the massive carrier, sheltered under the protection of the ship and her air group. Bedell hadn't felt safe for the entire flight back until he'd landed on the deck, and as usual he let out a sigh of relief when his boots touched the flight deck. For a pilot, he was very nervous about being in the air. Though given how ruthless and effective Skynet's machines were, he knew he wasn't alone. Every pilot and every marine who left the carrier's decks had already accepted that their next mission could be their last.

 _Nimitz_ still held three full fighter squadrons; thirty-six F/A-18s – half a dozen of which were on permanent standby and could be launched within five minutes to meet and take on any threat, with a further six ready to launch within fifteen minutes. The ship had seen its fair share of action against Skynet in the months since Judgement Day, had lost a dozen fighter aircraft and their pilots – good men, all – and the captain and crew had learned the value of being ready at a moment's notice.

As soon as Bedell stepped out of the helicopter, the Executive Officer approached him and told the captain wanted to see him. About what, he wouldn't say. He was led to the captain's cabin and ushered in. Bedell took note of the luxurious looking wooden panels that lined the room. Framed photographs lined a shelf and the captain's desk; of various jets and helicopters, several officers on the boat, and another photo of the captain shaking hands with Barack Obama on the day he'd received command of his ship; the President personally congratulating him as he'd paid a visit to the  _Nimitz._

"At ease, Bedell," Captain Wallace nodded to him. "Sit down, son. I wanted to talk to you."

"About what, sir?" Bedell sat down but felt far from at ease, he never did when dealing with the captain. Captain Wallace was a hard man, with a ferret-like face and small, dark eyes. He was a good captain but tended to be far too serious and never lightened up, and was completely without a sense of humour. Bedell often wondered if the man ever cracked a smile. He reminded Bedell of John a little.

"John Connor," Wallace replied. "You met him once, right?"

"Yes sir, at Presidio Alto Academy." Bedell hadn't told Captain Wallace that John had only been a student at the academy and not the commandant, like Wallace thought. If he'd let out that Connor had only been a kid at the time, two years younger than he was, then Connor wouldn't have been taken seriously.

"What did you make of him?"

"Well, sir, he was only at the academy for a short time. He was a hard guy to read, but he looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He saved my life, though. I trust him."

"Yeah, I heard about that," Wallace replied. "Some psycho broke into the camp and attacked you, and Connor used himself as a distraction and lured the guy into a tar pit. Very clever." He'd heard all about it from Bedell before, but was just getting it straight in his head. "We've not heard from Connor in some time," he sighed wearily, resting his chin on his hands, propped up over the desk between him and Bedell.

"We've lost contact?" Bedell asked nervously. It was unthinkable that John could have just disappeared; he'd been with an entire company at Cheyenne Mountain. He couldn't have just vanished.

"Yes and no," Wallace replied. "We haven't had any contact with  _Connor_  since the attack on Skynet's rockets. We've still been in touch with Cheyenne Mountain, with one of his lieutenants, and since then I've been talking to Connor's 2ic, a Colonel Perry. Nobody's seen Connor in weeks. Perry's got no idea where Connor is. Nobody does. Perry's declared him MIA, presumed dead. I thought it would be right to let you know."

"Sir, we can't... that's not possible. We have to find him," Bedell protested.

"A lot of people are missing, Bedell," said Wallace. "One more from the Army brass isn't going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things."

"That's  _bullshit!"_ Bedell snarled, jumping to his feet and knocking his chair to the floor. His face was red with anger and the veins started to stick out his temples. Connor had saved his life from the machine, he'd told Bedell about the future; how he'd be a hero and save people. He'd stopped Bedell from dropping out of the academy and making the biggest mistake of his life. He owed Connor more than his life. "You know as well as I that if it wasn't for Connor we'd be out at sea sitting on our hands, and now we're just leaving him to die?"

"Back up, lieutenant," Wallace barked. "Connor was a good general but he's gone. Shit happens, get used to it. We've lost good men, too." Bedell lowered his head and stood at ease, all the fight drained out of him as he thought about their own losses. They'd lost twenty men and eleven F/A-18s, only a single crew had managed to eject to safety whilst fighting Skynet's aircraft; plus two choppers and their crews totalling fourteen men. Thinking of their own dead - some of them having been good friends of his - took the wind out of his sails, and he breathed in deeply to calm himself before speaking again.

"If Connor's gone, then who's giving the orders now, sir?"

"Colonel Perry has assumed command of Cheyenne Mountain and 4th Infantry, but so far he's simply told us to stay on station. I've spoken to other Navy units – the  _Jimmy Carter_  and the  _George HW Bush,_ and they're also holding on to their dicks out at sea. Ground units for now have no direction, and have been told to await orders. Colonel's a far cry from General, Bedell, and the  _Jimmy Carter_ and  _George Bush_  aren't happy at taking orders from an Army colonel; even more so because we're not even  _getting_  any orders; we're sitting here idle. We're heading out to sea as soon as all our birds have landed."

"So we're just running away?" Bedell asked accusingly. Ever since John Connor had told him about Skynet and the war and the machines, he'd wanted to be involved, wanted to fight. It galled him that they were just going to turn tail and run.

"Nobody's 'running away,' lieutenant, and I'd thank you to keep your mouth in check." Wallace leaned back in his chair and sighed. Truth was, he felt like they were running away, too, and he hated it. But there was nothing else for them to do but to stay in place, in range of Skynet's bombers. Bedell was one of his favourites; he'd taken the young chopper pilot under his wing, and tolerated a more casual approach with him than with other members of the crew. But Bedell was pushing on insubordination this time.

"Sure seems like it, sir," Bedell grumbled.

"For crying out loud, Bedell! What the hell do you expect me to do? We've got no orders and no intel on Skynet. All we can goddamn do is sit around and wait until someone tells us what to do. I don't like it anymore than you do, but we've got no choice. I understand you're upset over losing Connor; he saved your life and all, but I won't tolerate being spoken to like that. Understand?"

"Yes sir," Bedell sighed sadly, knowing he'd lost this debate and nothing he said would change Wallace's mind. "Where are we going, then, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Alaska," Captain Wallace replied. "We're going to rendezvous with the  _George Bush_ near what's left of Elmendorf air base to stock up on food and munitions. Then, I don't know. We'll work it out when we get there."

Bedell nodded yes and was then dismissed. He said nothing to anyone and made his way miserably to his cabin. It wasn't right, leaving Connor missing somewhere out there. He felt like a coward. There was nothing he could do, though. Martin Bedell lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling until he fell asleep, as the aircraft carrier  _Nimitz_  broke off from the resistance and quietly sailed out to the open sea, leaving California and its inhabitants to its fate.

* * *

Two figures moved through the pitch blackness of night and made their way down a desolate and abandoned street, crouching and creeping and dashing between shadows. Ever vigilant, ever wary, careful that the slightest wrong step could bring the wrath of Skynet's metal monsters down upon them.

The two figures moved with unnatural silence and stealth: one borne with the fine arts of infiltration, subtlety, and stealth already programmed into her brain; the other having learned her skills from months spent living among the machines, where speed and silence had been an invaluable asset that had kept her alive when others had been slain. They were completely different, the two of them. One borne of metal, for the sole purpose of war, a living weapon; the other made of flesh and bone, vulnerable, physically weak in comparison to her companion but with a keen instinct and knowledge of the area they were manoeuvring through. Knowledge that had kept them away from several machine patrols as they skulked their way through the town.

Courtney led the way, blazing a soundless trail through several blocks, taking them on an indirect route. Through and around blocks of houses, doubling back on more than one occasion, standing stock still and flattening her body against a wall or lying down wherever she could find cover. Cameron would have thought she was being inefficient, but she also knew that a direct, efficient route would likely lead them into a machine patrol, and that Courtney knew the way, so she'd follow her lead for how while she brought up the rear with her rifle.

Courtney led the way out of a block of houses and towards the main road that ran through the town centre and ran parallel to the highway, two hundred metres away, that led back out into the desert, the same road Cameron would walk again after she'd helped locate Courtney's father, once again searching for John. Cameron was aware that helping Courtney delayed her search, and every delay could decrease the chances of her finding him, but she'd also come to realise she was never going to find John alone. She needed allies to help her, and in helping Courtney, she'd have an ally to help her search for John. And if her father by some miracle was alive, he could also be of assistance to her. The odds of her finding John alive decreased with every hesitation, but also increased if she had help. It was a worthy exchange. And she still identified with Courtney: both of them were searching for someone they held dear to them, ignoring the high odds that their loved ones were already dead.

Courtney froze as they reached the side of the road and she got down flat on the ground. Cameron followed suit and lay down beside her, her rifle shouldered as she swept the scene in front of her for threats.

"The town centre is the other side of that block," Courtney said softly, pointing towards the block of houses on the other side of the road. "After that it's three more blocks to the school."

An HK soared by in the distance, heading away from them and flying southwest, flying out to hunt down any humans it could find. Courtney looked down at her watch, using her hand to cover the luminous green glow when she pressed a button to illuminate it enough for her to see. "Five-thirty a.m., just like clockwork," she said to Cameron. "Dad and I learned their patterns so we could move around easier. They send out machines every hour or so to patrol. Nearer the school there's the big ones with treads; Dad said they patrol the streets close to the school all the time. They just keep rolling on and on, they never stop."

"T-2s," Cameron replied quietly. She could hear the rolling of treads in the distance, far enough away to not be an immediate threat, but she noted where the sound was coming from and kept track of the sound in case it came closer. "Patrol machines, built to destroy tanks. We should avoid them."

"You can... you can beat 'em, right?" Courtney asked nervously, nodding to Cameron's rifle.

"It's unlikely," she replied. She only had two grenades for her weapon's launcher, and there was no way her 5.56mm rifle rounds would penetrate the T-2's thick armour. She remembered how difficult it had been for her and John to destroy the first T-2 in Fort Carson – the battle that had made John the leader of resistance in Cheyenne Mountain. It had taken a Javelin rocket and half a dozen of the same kind of grenades she was carrying to finally destroy it.

"So what're we gonna do?" Courtney asked, sounding a slightly pathetic as she spoke. "We can't turn back now."

"Hide," Cameron replied, hearing the T-2 treads rolling closer, around the next corner.

"I know that," Courtney sighed. "I know how to hide, I  _told you_. I've been hiding out here since the bombs went off..."

 _"Hide!"_ Cameron grabbed Courtney by her hooded top and pulled her upright, dragging her as she ran across the road and into the nearest house, pushing the door to but not closing it to avoid making any noise, and crouched low to the ground. She noted the layout of the house was very similar to Courtney's, or at least what she'd seen of her house. Courtney got down on her knees and hunched over, staying deathly silent as the rumbling of tracks got louder as the machine approached. Both Cameron and Courtney knew that a single sound would alert it to their presence and would unleash a storm of antitank shells that would tear the house apart and collapse it onto them. Cameron had nothing to fear from the house falling down on her but Courtney would be killed and she'd be left alone once again to search for John.

They both waited in tense silence for several minutes until the machine had rolled past and its treads were out of even Cameron's earshot.

"Why Cactus Springs?" Cameron asked Courtney, even though she'd already enquired about it before. Perhaps Courtney had forgotten to mention something. Humans were forgetful; their memory was inefficient. It didn't make sense why Skynet would garrison so many machines in such a small town. There had to be a reason, and she needed to know. It could mean the difference between life and death for them.

"I don't know, I really don't," Courtney insisted. "There's nothing here much at all; we're just a small town, couple hundred families; nothing much else."

"You said cars drove through the town. When, how many?" Cameron asked.

"A few weeks after the bombs fell, maybe. I don't know how many. There were trucks, though. Big ones. They just drove through and the next day the machines rolled in and killed everyone who survived. Everyone but me and Dad."

"What kind of trucks?" Cameron asked. Courtney had said cars before, but not mentioned trucks. She wanted to know what was in them, whether it was connected to whatever Skynet was doing in Cactus Springs. She wanted to know before she approached the school to look for Courtney's father.

"I don't know...  _big_ ones, that's it."

"It's important," Cameron said expectantly, wanting more information from Courtney.

"I don't know anything, okay! I'm not like you... I'm not a soldier, I don't know anything about the machines or what they're doing." Courtney realised she was snapping at Cameron and took a deep breath to try and calm herself down, closing her eyes and trying to relax for a moment. "All I know is that whatever they're doing, it's at the school. That's where they all are. Dad said they were doing something there. He didn't say what, but he went there to find out. So whatever it is,  _that's_  where we'll find out, so we should go there right now."

Courtney pushed herself onto her feet, still in a crouch, and raised herself up slowly, lifting her head over the windowsill to peek outside. She couldn't see or hear anything, so she stood fully upright and moved towards the door. Cameron stood up quickly, the polar opposite of Courtney's slow and stealthy movements. She could hear no movement nearby and knew no machines were in the immediate area. Courtney was right that they should move out now. But before Courtney pulled the door open Cameron grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"We've got to go," Courtney quietly insisted, trying to pull free of Cameron's unbreakable grip and wondering how she was so strong for someone not much bigger than her. Cameron ignored her struggling and pulled her sidearm from a hip holster. Courtney's eyes widened at the sight of the weapon and for a moment she thought Cameron was going to kill her.

"Take it," Cameron pushed the gun into her palm, handing her two spare magazines. It wouldn't stop a machine but it might provide a moment's distraction that could prove invaluable.

"I don't know how to use it," Courtney replied, holding the gun awkwardly in both hands.

"Point and shoot," Cameron instructed. "Don't shoot anything over twenty metres away."

"Twenty metres," Courtney swallowed nervously. "We're gonna be  _that_ close?"

"Probably closer," Cameron said blankly, as if that were nothing. "I'll lead," she pulled Courtney aside and left the house first, her rifle shouldered. She sensed Courtney right behind her and set off at a fast march around the corner and down the block, having memorised the route Courtney had told her before, she was able to quickly lead the way and her hypersensitive eyes and ears could detect movements and sounds that Courtney couldn't.

Under Cameron's lead, they quickly moved from one building to the next. Neither of them made a sound or spoke a word as they travelled, both of them had eyes and ears strained for the telltale whine of engines or rumbling of treads. As they got closer to the school, Cameron could hear something. She wasn't sure what; she couldn't identify it and it bore no match to any machine she'd heard before, yet it was undeniably the sound of heavy machinery. She wondered if Skynet had already developed other weapons and machines, and if Cactus Springs was the place where they'd been created. It was unlikely, but then she'd seen T-70s brought into production several years before they were supposed to, triggered by the Roswell crash that had in fact been Terminators and not aliens. It was possible the timeline had been altered further, but by what she didn't know. She didn't think Skynet would have the infrastructure yet to develop new machines, but she'd already learned from experience not to assume anything.

Within a few minutes they were less than a block away from their destination. The school was less than a hundred yards away and around the next corner. The rumbling of heavy machinery was joined by that of heavy treads – the telltale sign of approaching T-2s, and a far-off whine of HK engines in the air. Cameron pulled Courtney into a back alley behind a row of houses, not wanting to stay in line of sight of the school in case any machines were watching that she couldn't see.

She peeked quickly around the corner and saw the school down the block, on the other side of a small road. The school consisted of a handful of buildings behind a parking lot, and plenty of space out the back. Much more space than there had been at Campo de Cahuenga High School, even if the school itself was half the size of the one she and John had briefly attended. In the parking lot at the front were a number of abandoned cars and 4x4s. An HK briefly hovered in the air above the school before flying south, most likely on a close air patrol of the town. Cameron could also hear the familiar rolling treads of at least three T-2s patrolling the grounds around the school, although she couldn't see them yet. None of that greatly concerned Cameron, though. They could sneak around the T-2s with ease.

What really caught Cameron's attention was a massive metal tower from what Cameron guessed was the field behind the school, twice the height of the building at least. It was a tall, thin, skeletal structure that stuck straight out the ground, as far as she could tell. She wasn't sure what it was, it could have been a radio tower, an electricity pylon, or something else entirely. It didn't look like it was originally part of the school.

"Was that there before?" Cameron said softly, tapping Courtney on the shoulder and pointing towards the tower.

"No, I never saw that before," she replied, looking at it in confusion. That must have been what her dad went after, she realized. She hoped to God he was still there, still keeping watch on the place. He could be hurt, or trapped, and he'd need help. She wanted to run out there and call out for him. Every minute they waited could put her dad in even more trouble. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to rush forward to find her dad, but she knew very well she'd be killed if she tried. She'd survived on her own long enough to know that it would be a stupid move, even if it felt like the right one, and managed – albeit barely – to keep her conflicting emotions in check.

Cameron kept her eyes on the road in front of the school, before the parking lot, and waited as the squealing, rumbling treads of T-2 tanks got closer. She watched its behemoth form roll into view, its upper half swiveling around and its massive 30mm cannons rotated under pintle-joints under the machine's 'shoulders'. The cannons' gaping maws seemed to focus on them for a long time, as if death itself were staring them in the face. Time seemed to slow down for both Cameron and Courtney. And for Cameron, a cybernetic entity whose chip could perform millions of calculations many times faster than the human brain, time seemed to stop entirely for her. A few seconds seemed like an eternity, and she couldn't stop herself from thinking what would happen to John when those cannons opened up and tore her and Courtney to shreds.

The T-2, however, rolled past without noticing them and continued on its course. Cameron remained still, despite Courtney itching to go forward. She saw the anxiety on her face and knew she'd feel the same if she knew they were close to finding John and she had to wait. Several times she thought her blonde companion might run out towards the school, and considered knocking her unconscious to stop her, but Courtney stood perfectly still, waiting and watching. Courtney wondered how Cameron could display such inhuman patience; how she could just crouch silently, not moving a muscle, and watch, seemingly not even blinking. But then again, it wasn't  _her_  dad they were trying to find.

Cameron stayed still for another hour, watching the pattern of the T-2's patrols as she'd done at the Nellis air base perimeter. She'd noted when the first one had repeated the same circuit as she'd identified a mark on it, a scratch on the bodywork, that she saw as it rolled in front of the school for a second time. There was a two minute interval between patrols, and they were approximately eighty five metres from the school entrance.

Cameron sprang forward like an Olympic sprinter – although still limping slightly – and tore down the road, leaving Courtney in the dust as she ran towards the school entrance, hearing Courtney falling behind, unable to keep pace with her. When she got to the parking lot entrance at the front of the school she turned round and knelt on one knee, rifle shouldered as she covered Courtney's approach.

"What're you, like a track-star or something?" Courtney puffed, out of breath. She'd tried her hardest to keep up with Cameron but the brunette had quickly outpaced her. "If we manage to beat Skynet, you should try out for the Olympics," she gulped, getting her air back. "Man, you're fast."

Cameron didn't reply and instead turned around towards the school. Something was immediately off, she saw. There were bodies in the school parking lot, but not of students or teachers. Two men, both wearing greyish-green combat fatigues similar to the figure in Nellis air base, lay on the floor outside a Hummer, their heads blown apart and splattered all over the asphalt into an unrecognisable bloody pulp of blood, brain matter, and chips of bone. The flies were already swarming over them and the smell, while not bothering Cameron in the slightest, made Courtney gag. She fought it down and breathed through her mouth, looking away from the bodies.

Cameron, on the other hand, thought nothing of it and simply noted that they looked like they'd been dead a few weeks. More interesting to her were their weapons and equipment: No nametags on the clothes, no tags or any insignia for either rank or unit. They were carrying SCAR-H assault rifles with grenade launchers; not US military standard issue. She had no idea who they were or what they'd been doing. Their weapons were special forces issue but the car they were in was a civilian Hummer, not a military vehicle. Their clothes weren't military issue, either. They weren't any unit operating under John's command, so she thought it likely they were a separate group, a militia, either acting on their own or for someone else. What they were doing though, she had no idea. She thought it most likely that they'd been observing the school when they'd come under attack. But not by Skynet. Cameron spotted several empty shotgun shell casings littered on the ground. They'd been killed by another human. But why, she didn't know. Humans were irrational, and even in the future, people still killed each other.

She slung own rifle over her back and picked up the SCAR-H, it had larger rounds and would be more effective against machines than her carbine. She pocketed seven extra magazines and several grenades from the bodies and stuck them into her pack, then led the way into the front entrance to the school building.

Inside the school was dead. The air inside was cold and stale. There was no sound, no smell, no movement at all; only the dust particulates floating aimlessly through the air in the hallway. The lights were dead inside and the only illumination came from the slivers of ambient light that filtered in through the glass in the doorway. Courtney was barely able to see anything, so Cameron once again took the lead, able to see easily in the dark.

"I don't like this," Courtney muttered, terrified and starting to shake slightly as they made their way through the dark corridor. Courtney found herself suddenly afraid of the dark; who knew what unseen horrors could be lurking for them in the pitch black. The primitive part of her brain was fully awakened now and screamed at her to get out, to avoid the dark at all costs. She could just...  _sense_  something was wrong. No sounds, no movement. Everything was still. It was like a tomb. Still, she didn't turn back or try to run away; her dad was around here somewhere, she knew it and she wasn't going to turn back until she'd found him.

"How can you see in the dark, anyway?" Courtney hissed, curious how Cameron was leading so confidently and so fearlessly through the dark, and also trying to distract herself from her own internal terror. "And don't tell me you just eat a lot of carrots."

"I don't eat a lot of carrots," Cameron replied. She thought it best that Courtney remained unaware she was a machine. She removed the M4A1 rifle from her back, placing it in Courtney's hands. "Hold it and look through the sight." Courtney clumsily shouldered the carbine and peered through the scope, her surroundings taking on an eerie green glow through the sights and narrowing her entire world down to the other end of the sight. She saw Cameron peering through the scope of her more exotic looking weapon, unaware that Cameron could see perfectly well in the dark and was merely keeping up appearances for her sake.

"Don't touch the grenade launcher," Cameron said, seeing that Courtney's finger was right on the trigger and very close to killing them both. She'd have to teach Courtney how to use the weapon later, or she wouldn't be very helpful.

"Oh," Courtney exclaimed apologetically, taking her finger way from the trigger under the barrel. "Sorry."

Cameron moved off again and Courtney followed, swinging the rifle from left to right so she could see all around her. Being able to see where she was going helped to alleviate her fear just slightly, and being able to see Cameron was a huge relief. Courtney was quiet; she'd quickly learned the value of staying quiet when the machines had rolled into town, but Cameron was something else. She didn't even make a sound. Courtney could hear her own heart thundering in her chest, her breathing seemed so loud to her that it was impossible the machines couldn't hear it, and every step she took might as well have been over dried leaves. She knew it was all in her mind, but she couldn't even hear Cameron breathe and she moved so silently it was as if her feet never touched the ground.

They moved quickly through the school, checking each room on the ground level first and performing a thorough sweep of the building, finding nothing before Cameron led the way up the stairs to the second floor. Cameron entered one of the classrooms on the second floor, stepped around a bloody, bullet riddled corpse, similarly dressed to those outside, and walked over to the window at the end of the room. From there she could see exactly what the tower she'd spotted was, Skynet was doing in Cactus Springs, and why the machines had rolled into town.

The entire sports field behind the school had been transformed: five HKs sat on the football field, surrounded by smaller maintenance drones that worked to rearm and refuel the aircraft. More service machines cleared a long, straight strip of land that stretched out into the scrubland behind the field, several hundred metres long. A runway, Cameron knew. On the baseball field, closer to the school, stood the tower she'd seen. It wasn't a radio tower or an electricity pylon like she'd first thought. It was an oil derrick. She saw a long hollow tube that bored into the ground, and pipes leading from the derrick and towards a parked tanker plane at the far end of the makeshift runway, next to a small fleet of tanker trucks and eighteen-wheel semis.

"There's oil under Cactus Springs," Cameron said to Courtney. She'd not mentioned that to her before.

"I didn't know there was," Courtney replied, sounding guilty. "I mean, people  _talked_ about it but nobody ever did any drilling before. Nobody really believed it.

Cameron knew now exactly what Skynet was doing. Nellis air base was less than sixty miles away from Cactus Springs. The base itself was Skynet's largest establishment in Nevada, and likely one of the largest in the United States; housing scores of machines and producing many more. Within a few months Skynet's forces in Nevada would have multiplied by many times, scores of machines would become hundreds, possibly thousands. But Skynet needed fuel for those machines and Nellis' fuel stocks wouldn't be enough.

All Skynet's machines in the future were powered by miniature nuclear reactors; even her. But Skynet would be years away from being able to create a nuclear power source small enough to fit inside an aircraft or a Terminator, so it had to rely on oil. Skynet would logically prefer to supply Nellis with oil from a nearby source than to ship it from further away, where supply would be more dangerous and could be sabotaged by human efforts. The tanker plane would carry oil to a refinery, or one would eventually be built on the school site. Eventually Skynet would install pipes either above or underground to pump the oil directly to Nellis, but that would take time.

"This was what your father found," Cameron said quietly to her companion, turning to face Courtney and realising she wasn't there. She'd been so transfixed on the sight before her that she'd not heard Courtney walk off. The girl was very quiet, but Cameron knew she should have still heard her. She didn't know why she found herself becoming distracted at times. All her visual and auditory senses were in perfect working order as far as she could tell.

Courtney left the room silently as Cameron stared at the view outside. They'd found the reason why her dad had gone sneaking around the school, but she didn't care about that; she just wanted to find him. She still held the rifle out in front of her; it felt heavy in her hands and her arms were shaking from constantly carrying it, and her right eye strained from continuously staring through the night-sight. She knelt down and took off her pack, pulling out a small torch and switching it on, sliding a red filter over the lens so it gave out enough light to see, but hopefully not enough to be seen by anything outside that might decide to look in through the windows. It was one of the lessons her dad had taught her that had saved her life several times since the machines took over. She swept the torch around and let the rifle hang from the strap around her shoulder; she didn't know how to use it anyway and all it did was make her arms tired. She didn't know how Cameron could carry her gun so easily, and hers was even bigger.

"Dad... Dad?" She whispered hoarsely, hoping he could hear her but hoping just as much that anything else  _couldn't._

Three rooms down from the one she and Cameron had been in, she saw the body of a slender, dark haired man on the ground, sitting propped up against the wall as if he'd just sat down and died, yet the massive chunk taken out of his head suggested otherwise. He'd had half his head blown off, just like the other men outside, and he was dressed the same. In his hand he still held a handgun, clutching on to it as if it were a lifeline. She saw a tattoo on his right wrist that looked like a barcode. She had no idea what the heck  _that_  was about.

As she shone the torch around the room the red beam washed over a boot on the ground and Courtney bent down to investigate. She moved the torch and the beam moved up the body, revealing another man lay still on the ground. This one older than the first, with short grey hair closely cropped to his scalp, and wearing simple jeans and a shirt. In one hand he held a shotgun, a pair of empty shell casings lay on the ground nearby. Two puckered gunshot wounds punctured his chest and there was a third on his forehead, right between the eyes. A large red stain had soaked into the carpet where the blood had seeped out the exit wound in the back of his head, which was thankfully concealed from her sight. He stared vacantly, sightlessly up at the ceiling. Courtney dropped the torch – ignoring the loud clatter it made as it hit the ground - and fell to her knees as she took in the man's features and instantly recognised him.

"Dad! No, no, no, no, please, no..." she babbled incoherently, shaking her head as if in denial. Her entire world came crashing down and shattered around her, and she felt as if she'd been stabbed in the chest with a red hot poker. Every breath was racked with sobs and her whole body was shaking as she cried. Nothing mattered any more; the only person in her life she'd been able to depend on, who'd always been there for her, was gone. Her eyes brimmed with tears that streamed down her face as she sobbed and cried, and hugged the dead body of her father tightly in her arms as she screamed out a wordless howl of white hot pain and anguish.


	9. Escape and Evasion

The sound of Courtney's scream tore Cameron's attention from observing the oil derrick and airfield below, and in a flash she was out the room and tearing down the corridor towards Courtney's voice, convinced her new companion was in immediate danger. She needed an ally to help her, and she preferred having her company to being alone. She burst into the classroom with her rifle at the ready, expecting to see a machine attacking her helpless new friend.

Instead she found Courtney on the floor, crying out in anguish, tears streaming down her face, her arms wrapped around the body of a man, whom Cameron deduced was her father, clutching a shotgun in one hand. Humans didn't normally cry over the deaths of people they didn't know. John did, she knew, but that was different. She wasn't sure how or why exactly. Courtney shifted slightly and Cameron saw the man's face. It was her father; he was an exact match to the photographs in her house.

Cameron stood motionless for a moment, taking in the scene before her. Courtney's father was dead. Shot in the chest twice and once in the head. Another man sat dead in the corner, the top right-hand side of his head had been shattered, likely from the shotgun Courtney's father was holding. The men outside had been killed in a similar fashion and Cameron had seen shell casings outside in the parking lot that seemed to match the ones on the floor. Courtney's father had killed them before this one killed him.

Something about the dead man looked very familiar to Cameron. She knelt down and turned his head to face her, ignoring Courtney's sobs. A large section of his face had been shattered and blown away by the shotgun, but Cameron still recognised the corpse on the floor.

Not long after Sarah Connor had died, she and John had been watching television together when she saw him again on the news, with another man she also recognised; James Knight: the CEO of Kaliba Group, alongside two other men,; one of whom was this man. They'd publicly announced, alongside an air force general, the creation of the Skynet defence system, claiming it would make the world a safer place. It had also been the point when she, John, and Derek had realised they'd failed to stop Judgement Day, that preventing the war was impossible and they had to defer to 'Plan B' – surviving to try and win the war. If not for the mysterious Kaliba Group they might have been able to stop Skynet before it killed three billion people, and given John the life he'd wanted to lead.

Cameron let go of the man's head and turned her attention to his wrist, spotting the barcode tattoo etched deep into the skin. She dropped his wrist, realising the extent of what had been going on in Cactus Springs.

The men downstairs hadn't been trying to stop Skynet or spying on the machines, she realised; they were from the future, and they'd actually been  _helping_  them. They were likely the ones who'd set up the oil derrick in the first place. What else were they doing? She wondered.

"He's dead," Courtney sobbed, looking up at Cameron and hugging her father's body tightly, unwilling to let it go. Cameron said nothing but instead knelt down before the other body, inspecting it. The man's position wasn't right for someone who'd been killed in a gunfight. With such extreme trauma to his head and brain he should have died instantly or at least have lost all motor control over his body and fallen to the floor. He wouldn't have simply sat down and died, nor would Courtney's father have died from the gunshot to the head if he'd been the victor of their fight, which he appeared to be. Cameron calculated only two possible scenarios that could explain it; the extremely unlikely possibility that they'd shot each other at the same time, or there had been a third person involved. Neither seemed likely, but she couldn't think of any other possibilities.

"He's dead," Courtney repeated, looking at Cameron and bursting into a fresh wave of tears. "They killed him!"

"Yes," Cameron replied simply, not turning to look at her, intent on the body in front of her.

"Why? Why him? Why my dad? He never hurt anyone."

"I don't know," Cameron said quietly. She thought she knew. Courtney's father had been spying on the machines. He'd told her he was going to take a closer look, and must have discovered their operation. They'd either discovered him, or he'd attacked them, and he'd killed several of them before this last one had gained the upper hand and shot him dead. Neither explained how the Kaliba man had seemed to have sat down and died, with half his head missing.

"What are you doing with  _him?"_  Courtney snapped, gently lowering her dad's head back to the floor from where it had been cradled in her arms and standing up to walk towards Cameron and the dead body.  _"He_  killed my dad."

"I know," Cameron replied without a trace of emotion; she felt nothing for Courtney's father, she'd never met the man. Though his loss was regrettable; he was ex-military and would have been useful.

"What's wrong with you? Don't you care about anything at all?" Courtney was incredulous that Cameron seemed so cold, the dead man on the ground was nothing more than a curiosity to her, and Cameron hadn't looked twice at her father. He wasn't her father, she guessed, so she didn't care. The girl didn't seem to have a single compassionate bone in her body.

"Yes," Cameron answered. "I care about John."

She hesitated, sobbing. "Well... well...  _fuck_  your 'John,' and fuck  _him_ too!" she pointed down at the other body and then ran crying out of the classroom and down the hallway. Cameron took one last look at the body, trying to determine what exactly had transpired between him and Courtney's father then approached her dad and knelt down beside his corpse.

His eyes had glazed over and gone pale, where once the irises had been sparkling emerald. Just like Courtney's. She pulled the shotgun from his hands and racked the slide until the gun was empty. Only two rounds remained in the weapon but an unceremonious search of his body revealed twenty more shells. It was better that Courtney had left the room, she thought. She would have objected to her manhandling her father's body like this. She loaded up the shotgun with six more shells and pocketed the rest. A further search of his body and his pack revealed two tins of stew and a three-quarter-full bottle of water. She didn't need the food but Courtney would, and eating would further maintain the illusion she was human. Courtney's reaction would be typical to most humans when they'd realised that she was a machine, and Cameron still needed her to help find John.

Cameron started to stand up when she looked again at Courtney's father's eyes, and she did something she'd seen many resistance fighters do to their friends who'd been brought back to bunkers and tunnels after an engagement but had died later of their injuries; she ran her hands down his face and closed his eyes, then placed his hands together on his stomach. He was just a body to her, but she knew that humans performed certain rituals with their dead. It didn't make sense to her; it didn't benefit the dead in any way, didn't bring them back, so she assumed it was more about helping the survivors to grieve. She knew about grieving; John had dealt with grief and mourning throughout his life, and she knew he'd approve if she'd done the same with Sarah.

That done, Cameron left the room and set out to find Courtney; it was easy to track her, she could hear the girl's faint crying. She followed the sound, stalking silently down the corridor, Courtney's voice growing louder and switching between sobs, whimpers, and screams, as she got closer. She found Courtney in what looked to be a chemistry classroom, huddled up in a corner behind the teacher's desk, under the blackboard that spanned the far wall. She hugged her knees to her chest and was curled up in a ball on her side, still crying loudly. Cameron crossed the room, weaving between seats, and stood over her, looking down.

"We need to go, now."

"No," Courtney replied bitterly. "Why should I?"

"Because the machines will find us," Cameron answered.

"I don't care," Courtney said blankly, not moving or even looking at Cameron. She knew that look; she'd seen it from John enough times to recognise it. Courtney wasn't going to move, she'd have to be dragged out, which would make too much noise and attract the machines, if they hadn't already heard Courtney's cries. The oil derrick was noisy, and could provide them with some cover from any machines outside, but all it would take was one drone patrolling inside the building to hear them and the alarm would be raised.

"Just go away," Courtney begged her. She'd lost everything, now she just wanted to be alone and lie down and die. She didn't care about surviving, or helping Cameron find this 'John' she was searching for. The end of the world hadn't mattered so much to her, because she'd had her dad and he'd had her.

"I understand," Cameron said, standing over her.

"John, right?" Courtney asked, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

"Yes, I've lost him, too. And he's lost me."

"John's dead," Courtney snapped. "Just like my dad, just like everyone else; killed by those machines. We're all gonna die, so what's the point?"

Cameron frowned at her, the words 'John's dead' causing her to twitch in anger, like she'd done before with Riley. Just hearing those words hurt her; the only thing a person other than John could say to upset her. she had to ignore it for now and push her feelings to the back of her mind and not allow them to interfere. She needed Courtney's help to search for John. Two sets of eyes were better than one, and Cameron would rather have her company than search alone. She preferred not to be alone.

"Just leave me alone," she said without emotion, her voice as blank as Cameron's ever was. Cameron thought about what she could say; 'I'm sorry for your loss,' didn't seem like the right thing to say; John had once told her that it there was nothing that could be said to ease a person's grief, which made no sense to her. She tried to think of something to say, anything to try and relieve her pain.

Just then she heard the steady, regular thudding of heavy feet on the ground, growing louder and closer. A machine was approaching. Cameron knew she could handle it, but where there was one, more would certainly follow.

"We need to go," Cameron insisted, glaring down at Courtney. "Now." The machine might have simply been performing a set patrol, but it was impossible for it not to have heard their conversation or Courtney's crying. Her scream had probably caught their attention and the machines had been dispatched to search for them.

"No," Courtney pulled away as Cameron tried to grab her hand and pull her up.  _Leave me alone!_  I don't care anymore, so..." Courtney trailed off as she heard the thudding of heavy feet on the ground and the giant form of a bipedal machine plodded into view. Courtney stared past Cameron in abject terror as the machine's eight foot frame filled the doorway. She'd survived for weeks in a town overrun with the machines, yet she'd never seen them up close before. Now the machine was only a few feet away and blocking the only way out of the room. She was trapped.

Cameron grabbed Courtney and pushed her behind the heavy wooden desk as the T-70 raised its gun-arm at her. She brought her rifle to bear but was too late; the machine loosed a deafening burst of fire that forced Courtney to cover her ears. She watched as the burst of fire hit Cameron straight in the chest and knocked her to the floor, where she lay unmoving. The T-70 burst through the doorway, taking half the frame with it as it advanced on Cameron, its mini-gun still trained on her inert form.

"Cameron!" Courtney cried out in horror as the brunette lay deathly still on the ground. She stood up and pushed the gun Cameron had given her out in front of her like a fist, pointing it at the machine.

"Hey!" She yelled as she pulled the trigger; the gun sprayed out rounds in another deafening roar and Courtney closed her eyes as she fired; the recoil of full automatic tore the carbine from her grip and she dropped the weapon as the T-70 swung its arm away from Cameron and towards her, so slowly it was as if the machine had all day to kill her at its leisure. Courtney shrieked pathetically as the machine pointed its own weapon right at her; she dropped the gun and ducked down in a panic, just in time to narrowly avoid an incoming hailstorm of machinegun fire. The mechanical roar of the mini-gun was too much for her to bear; so loud her ears rang and she thought her head would explode from the noise alone, and the rounds smacked into the wall behind her, so close that she could feel their impacts only an inch or two above her head as plaster peppered her from above. She opened her mouth and screamed; her voice drowned out by the deafening fire from above.

The next few seconds happened so fast that it was all a blur to Courtney, her senses already overloaded by adrenaline and the deafening roar and brilliant muzzle flash of the machine's weapon: Cameron rolled forward onto her knees, faster than Courtney would have ever thought possible, and brought her SCAR-H to bear once more, her finger tensing on the trigger as she took aim at the T-70's head; Courtney's rifle clattered on the desk and bounced off onto the floor, the trigger jammed and carried on firing a long burst; the machine twitched once, twice, and then fell to the floor, its heavy body crashed to the ground with a dull thud that vibrated through the floorboards beneath them.

Cameron released the trigger and looked at the machine's shattered face. She'd been waiting for the machine to target Courtney and forget about her before she made her move to destroy it, but she'd never got the chance. Courtney had dropped her rifle, the trigger jammed and it had kept firing even after she'd let go. By sheer fluke one of the rounds had struck the T-70's face and penetrated through to its primitive CPU: a one in a million chance that could never be repeated again.

Courtney slowly stood up from behind the desk and stared into space, near catatonic, her eyes wide open and pupils like saucers and she could barely breathe, could barely think. Her eyes darted from one end of the room to the other and she trembled all over in fear and shock. She'd never been attacked before, never been that close to death before, and something had come loose inside her.

Cameron watched her for a few seconds, took in her face, flushed red, and her wild, feral eyes - like a hunted animal - and her rapid, ragged breaths; she was hyperventilating badly. It all became too much for Courtney; her legs gave out from beneath her and she collapsed on her backside to the floor in a quivering, sobbing wreck, burying her head in her hands and screaming out even louder than she'd done before.

"You survived, you should be happy," Cameron said.

"Happy: no," Courtney replied between gritted teeth, not even looking up at Cameron. "My dad's still dead, so why would I be happy?"

Cameron found she couldn't answer that; she still didn't fully appreciate the value of human life yet – only John's. "Because you're still alive," she said. "That's what he'd want."

"And how would you know what my dad would want?" Courtney snapped, not caring as her tears stained her clothes.

Cameron paused for a moment, unsure of how to answer that. She still didn't get empathy; she found it difficult to relate to anyone other than John. That was it, she thought. That was her answer. "That's what I'd want," she replied. "For John, if I died." She cast her eyes down, the thought of John's death once again causing pain and anguish, and also knowing she'd failed to comfort her new friend. She didn't like failing.

Courtney finally looked up at Cameron, wiping tears from her eyes, and took in her opposite, surprised by her actually showing some emotion and seeming to understand what she was going through. Maybe she'd misjudged Cameron, she thought. She'd saved her life from that thing, after all. How, though, she didn't know.

"How... how did you do that?" Courtney asked quietly as she looked down on the still machine, its face a shattered, smoking ruin.

 _"You_  did that," Cameron said plainly. "You shot it in the face; that was effective."

"I... I didn't do anything," Courtney protested. "I just dropped the gun and it went off on its own. But that's not what I meant; that thing _shot_ you. How did you..."

"Flak jacket," Cameron lied flawlessly, smoothing out her clothes for emphasis, knowing Courtney would simply accept it was the only possible explanation.

"Who  _are_  you?" Courtney asked, eyeing her strangely. Cameron went around wearing a flak jacket, carrying guns, and knew how to fight the machines. Even without the strange way she acted, seemingly without emotion, she was weird enough. Was she some kind of soldier or spy, or something?

"Not now," Cameron replied, grabbing Courtney's hand and pulling her as the entire airfield and oil platform outside was bathed in brilliant white light. "They know we're here; we have to go,  _now."_

Cameron led Courtney out the room and stepped over the inert hulk of the T-70, before pausing for a moment and turning back towards it. She grabbed the ammunition belt fastened to its arm and yanked hard, tearing it from its anchor points and stuffing the rounds into her pack, before slinging it over her back and running down the corridor.

They ran down the stairs to the ground floor, stealth abandoned for speed now, until Courtney tried to run out the front door. Since she'd found her father dead, all the survival instincts she'd had seemed to have left her. Cameron knew it was the grief; it made people act strangely. She'd started to understand it, but still wasn't sure why. She'd consider it later, she decided. Survival was their priority now.

"Wait!" Courtney dug her heels in and stopped walking, her loss of motion bringing Cameron to a standstill and swinging her round to face her. "My dad's still up there."

"He's dead," Cameron didn't see the issue in leaving a dead man behind; there was nothing they could do to bring him back.

"I know, but we can't just  _leave_  him up there."

"There's no time, escape is our priority."

"My dad's a priority to  _me!"_ She looked pleadingly at Cameron but her face remained stoic, she wasn't going to budge. "Just leave me and I'll bury him myself," her face hardened and she tried to pull out of Cameron's grip, but like before it was unbreakable. Still, she struggled for several seconds until Cameron tightened her hold on Courtney's arm and yanked her close.

"There's no time," Cameron repeated, her brown eyes boring into Courtney's green. As if to prove her point, jet engines roared overhead as an HK flew over the school building and hovered by the main entrance, waiting for someone to try and escape. "Stay here," Cameron ordered Courtney and slinked into the nearest classroom to peek out the window. T-1s were rolling across the playing field towards the building, accompanied by several more ungainly T-70s. They were being surrounded; the machines would cover all exits and then send in the T-70s to flush them out.

"Don't move," Cameron commanded, glaring at Courtney and placing on hand on her shoulder. She'd seen John do the same thing many times before to Perry, Derek, and other soldiers, and knew how effective it was at emphasising his orders. She handed Courtney her M4 carbine back and placed it on single shot so she wouldn't drop it again. "Shoot anything that comes through the entrance." She left Courtney where she was and sprinted back up the stairs, two steps at a time, and back into the room where Courtney's father lay. Courtney would have been upset again at seeing her father, and would have cried again and been unable or unwilling to move. She'd scanned the girl when she'd touched her, her pulse was over a hundred beats a minute and she was sweating and shaking slightly. Adrenaline was coursing through her, which would heighten her senses and reflexes and make her more effective in an emergency.

Cameron stepped over the body, ignoring it completely, and strode across the room to the window. It offered a good view of the developing Skynet facility below, to look for something she could use as a distraction.

The tanker, she decided. The tanker plane at the far end of the runway was likely full of fuel; that was her distraction. Cameron slotted a grenade into the under-barrel launcher on her weapon and took aim at the tanker. It was in extreme distance, slightly over three-hundred-and-fifty metres; just within the grenade's range. She aimed high and fired, a hollow thump sounding from the tube as the egg shaped projectile shot out of the window, a second later impacting the centre of the tanker's fuselage and exploding in a huge shower of sparks and starting several fires on the plane. Without looking at it again, Cameron ejected the empty casing and loaded another grenade, firing it at the oil derrick this time and shattering the skeletal structure of the platform, which started to list to one side with an audible  _screech_  as the metal supports buckled under the strain, and bolts and screws snapped and popped out of place as the structure started to collapse on itself.

As the derrick slowly toppled over and fell apart, the tanker's reserves ignited and secondary explosions erupted into a brilliant flashing fireball that momentarily transformed night into day. The resulting shockwave was so powerful that Cameron felt the ground tremble slightly beneath her. The blast expanded outwards and consumed a pair of grounded HKs that had been refuelling from the tanker and the maintenance drones that had been tending to them whilst they'd fed upon its fuel like infants suckling on their mother's teat; their own fuel adding to the fray and feeding tertiary explosions across the field.

Cameron paused for a few seconds to observe the damage she'd caused; the tanker and oil derrick were obliterated, two HKs had been vaporised along with the tanker plane, and fires had spread all over the school field to a number of maintenance machines and ammunition stores, creating even more carnage as they detonated and incinerated anything nearby. Several airborne HKs hovered over the chaos, searching for the cause of the destruction while others flew out to hunt for attackers. The T-1s and T-70s remained still, their infrared sensors confused by the intense heat from the fires.

Cameron didn't wait for the explosions to die down or for the machines to organise themselves, she tore out of the room and all but leapt down the flight of stairs, grabbing Courtney's hand and pulling her down the hallway.

"Where're we going?" Courtney asked as Cameron half-dragged her down the hall. "The door's that way."

"We're not using the door," Cameron replied as she pushed open a classroom door at the end of the corridor and pulled Courtney towards the window. Even with the explosions distracting them, there would be several machines in line-of-sight with the school's main entrance that would see them if they tried to leave through there. Cameron opened the window and pulled herself up onto the sill and through to the other side, then jumped down onto the ground and watched out for any machine patrols. There were none in sight, they'd not surrounded the school yet and the side of the building was, for the moment, a blind spot. She motioned for Courtney to climb out the window, surprised by the girl's agility as she easily pulled herself through and landed gracefully on the ground like a cat, landing crouched low to the ground and keeping herself close to the wall so she didn't stick out.

Without a word being spoken between them they ran away from the building, crossing the main road that ran in front of the school and down back through several streets, turning numerous corners to put angles as well as distance between themselves and the school. After several hundred metres Cameron slowed to a fast walk, leading the way out of town. After half an hour of silent marching they found themselves on the same stretch of highway that Cameron had followed into Cactus Springs earlier on. Cameron increased their pace and changed direction, walking away from the highway and out into the barren wilderness of the desert.

"I need to stop," Courtney blurted out, the first word either of them had said since leaving the school behind. Cameron looked back in the direction of the town and judged they were far enough away that Skynet's patrols were unlikely to find them. She stared at Courtney and saw the girl was shaking, trembling and in cold sweat. She'd lost a lot of colour from her face and she looked tired and haggard. Cameron knew the cause of it; living alone for weeks and continuously surviving on her own had made her hyper aware and vigilant, never able to relax. That, plus the trauma of seeing her father dead had almost made her catatonic, and being attacked by the T-70 would have created a surge of adrenaline in her system. As it seeped out of her, and she no longer had to maintain her constant vigilance now she was away from the machines, she was succumbing to exhaustion. She'd seen men act similarly in the future; they could keep fighting for days on end, but when the battle was over, they 'crashed', as John had once put it.

Courtney dropped to her knees on the ground, leaning over on all fours, and retched violently, releasing a stream of liquid vomit onto the rocky desert ground, burning her throat red raw and bringing more tears of pain to her eyes. She wiped her bangs of hair out of her face, stuck to her skin in long sweaty tangles. All at once, the enormity of it all hit her like a ton of bricks: everything that had just happened to her, finding her dad dead, being attacked; and she moved away from where she'd been sick and huddled up alone, leaned back on a large rock and screwed her eyes shut to try and stop herself from crying, but she couldn't stop the muffled sobs that escaped her lips.

Cameron saw her sitting alone and thought back to all the times John had done the same, sitting alone and being upset. She still didn't understand why people did that; people didn't like being upset, and being with other people helped remedy their sadness. Yet John had often opted to sit alone and sulk – or 'reflect' as he'd called it – and remain sad. It didn't make sense to her. Watching her alone, sad, trying not to cry, reminded her of John;  _too_   _much of John_. She approached and stood over her, pulling out her water bottle and holding it out to Courtney.

"You vomited, you should drink some water; it'll rehydrate you."

Wordlessly, Courtney took the bottle and gulped down a long mouthful, swilling it around her mouth and spitting it out to get the taste of sick out her mouth, and took another couple of gulps, swigging it down.

"Thanks," she said automatically, staring out into the desert.

Cameron sat down opposite Courtney, seeing her shivering – and not just from the adrenaline withdrawal. The desert at night was cold, especially after Judgement Day. They couldn't make a fire without risking it being seen by any patrolling machines.

"You're cold," Cameron said, pointing out the obvious. Courtney said nothing in reply and continued to stare at nothing, her expression a vacant, emotionless mask, but for the tears welling up in her eyes.

"I  _left him_  back there," she said guiltily, looking up at Cameron. "Dad went out there to keep me safe, and I just _left_  him. I could have done... _something._  I could have gone to help him. Maybe he'd still be alive if I hadn't just sat there in my basement."

"You couldn't have helped him," Cameron said, taking her bottle back from Courtney and slowly sipping the water inside, helping to keep her power cell cool and maintaining the illusion she was human.

"You should sleep," Cameron said several minutes later. "We'll leave in the morning."

"And go where?" Courtney asked.

"Find John, take him home."

"You really think he's alive?"

"Yes," Cameron said. "And I can't let anything happen to him," she sighed, a small spark of emotion emanating from her eyes before she turned her head to stare out into the desert. Courtney just barely noticed it as she spoke of him; the only time she'd displayed any feeling at all. He must be something special, she thought, to be seemingly the only thing that evoked any feeling from the stoic Cameron.

"Who is he?" Courtney asked, suddenly feeling curious about this 'John.' Why was she so adamant about finding him? "Why's he so important to you?"

"John teaches me things, he helps me. Without John I'm nothing."

"Is he your boyfriend, or something?" Courtney asked. It didn't sound like the healthiest relationship to her, if that's what it was. If she thought that without him she had nothing, then how was he treating her? Not that she'd had much to compare that to, really.

"Yes," Cameron admitted, feeling something well up inside her as she told Courtney about her relationship with John, even if she didn't know her true nature.

"I've never had a real boyfriend before," Courtney said. "Had a couple of dates, but Dad was... he was really protective of me; I'm all he had. My mom died when I was born, I never knew her. Dad left the Army and raised me on his own, gave up everything for me." Cameron instantly drew more parallels between Courtney and John; her life with her father sounded a lot like John and Sarah's. Courtney's father certainly sounded similar to Sarah Connor in some ways.

"We were really close, y'know," Courtney continued, a sad smile on her face as she spoke. "He took me camping every summer, just the two of us in the middle of nowhere. He taught me all the outdoors stuff he learned in the Army; how to make camp, how to make traps and catch animals and stuff. He taught me to fish," she smiled sadly at Cameron. "I  _loved_  going fishing with him. I sucked at it, but it was just us, miles from anywhere. I really liked it." Cameron noticed Courtney wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand but said nothing, simply sat silently while Courtney reminisced about her father. She was grieving. She'd suggest Courtney wrote a note but she didn't have a pen or paper on her, and she didn't know what else to say to help relieve it. She knew how to with John, but nobody else.

"Tell me about John," Courtney said after a few terse minutes of silence, wanting to distract herself from her own grief. "What's he like?"

"He thinks he's weak, he doesn't have faith in himself, he's afraid." Cameron said.

"Sounds like  _quite_  a guy," Courtney let out a sharp, humourless laugh and rolled her eyes.

"He fights Skynet, people follow him. He's stronger than he thinks he is but he's inefficient."

"How'd you mean," Courtney asked. She'd never heard of a person being described as inefficient before. She could see Cameron struggling for words. It was clear she wasn't much of a talker.

"He cares too much, sometimes he does stupid things." Cameron thought back to all the times John had risked his life to protect her: against Vick; when she went bad and tried to kill him; against Derek, against Perry and his own men, against Cromartie. John should have abandoned her every single time, though she was glad he didn't; they wouldn't have had what they had together. She'd be dead and he would have become like Future John. "I'd die for John Connor," she added.

"John  _Connor?"_  Courtney repeated, taken aback. "Your boyfriend is  _the_  John Connor?"

"Yes, I need to find him." She tilted her head in confusion when Courtney started chuckling. "You don't believe me," Cameron said.

"It's not that, Cameron," Courtney reached into her bag and pulled out a small battery powered radio. "I know where he is. Everyone does."

"Where?" Cameron demanded, her eyes narrowing. If Courtney knew where John was then she wanted to go there.  _Now._

"Listen," she said, switching on the radio. Static crackled harshly through the air, but after a few seconds someone started speaking, barely recognisable as a human voice.

_"... You're not alone... we're at the brink... They pack a lot of firepower, but the T-70s are... and primitive. If you can't outrun them, aim for their faces... the armour is weaker.... The T-2s are powerful and heavily armoured, but... heads are vulnerable, and they're confused by heat and fire. Most of all, don't... up hope._

_My name is John Connor, and I have a plan to defeat Skynet... find us in Carson City, we have food... and we can protect you. We can beat Skyn... if you're listening to this, you are the resistance...."_

"It just keeps repeating itself, over and over," Courtney said, turning the radio off and putting it back into her pack.

"It's a recording," Cameron stated the obvious. She'd tried to compare the voice in the transmission to her flawless memories of John, but it was so garbled and full of static that it was impossible for her to determine. He knew things about the machines, things she'd taught him. It was possible John had gotten away and met with other soldiers or militia in Carson City. Why he hadn't tried to contact her, she didn't know, but it hurt. She'd be happy to know he was safe, but more so if she was by his side, where she belonged.

"We were gonna try and go there, me and Dad," Courtney said. "Right after he got back from the school and found out what was going on. Said our best chance was with John Connor. He... he just wanted me to be safe," she sniffed and wiped her eyes as she spoke, and stifled a yawn, covering her mouth with her hands. She felt completely drained, more lethargic than she'd ever done in her life, and numb, detached from all that had happened during the night.

"Go to sleep," Cameron ordered, nodding at the compacted, rolled up sleeping bag in Courtney's open pack. She could see Courtney was in shock and needed her to recover from the trauma of the day – at least  _physically_  recover; she knew people took time to mentally and emotionally recover from grief; they were inefficient that way. "We'll head north at dawn, towards Carson City."

Courtney did as she was told and rolled out her sleeping back and crawled into it, curling up into a ball against the biting cold of the post-Judgement Day - night-time desert.

"What about you?" Courtney asked wearily as she settled down, struggling to keep her eyes open as she spoke to Cameron. Cameron thought about saying she didn't need to sleep, or she'd slept earlier in the day before she met Courtney. She couldn't power down her systems into standby mode, either. With her damaged power conduits, and what had happened before, the odds of her failing to reboot were too high. She decided to combine the two: Cameron lay down on the ground, her rifle on the ground next to her within easy reach, and closed her eyes, reducing the power flow to her limbs and all unnecessary systems, leaving simply her conscious thought, memory, and all sensors online.

She lay there on the ground, her eyes closed, listening to Courtney's breathing gradually slow as shock and exhaustion took their toll on the girl and she fell into a deep asleep.

Dawn was in five hours and forty-eight minutes; an eternity to Cameron, who had nothing to do but lay on the ground, pretending to be asleep for her companion's benefit and trying to conserve energy.

Cameron tried replaying memories of her and John together. Her built day – their day together out on the mountain, the cake John made her, and spending the night making sweet love to each other – was her favourite, and she couldn't suppress a smile as she replayed the flawless and very vivid memory over and over.

Even as she played back her memories for her enjoyment, Cameron found her ability to multitask so efficiently was extremely annoying as it prevented her from fully losing herself in her precious memories of John, and she wondered what John was doing in Carson City, how he'd escaped from Las Vegas, what his plan to defeat Skynet was, and why he hadn't come for or sent for her. Did he still love her? Had he forgotten about her?  _Five hours, forty six minutes._  It was going to be a long night.


	10. Will You Join me?

_Beep-beep...beep-beep...beep-beep..._ John stopped pushing the cart as his wristwatch beeped to signal midnight and the floodlights around the hospital shut off instantaneously, as if timed to his watch alarm, and immersed the entire camp into a murky midnight blue hue. John's weary body screamed in relief as he let go of the corpse-laden cart and stood up straight, cracking his back and stretching out the muscles; cramp and tensed up from endless hours hunched over a cart and pushing, pulling, and lifting. He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes, leaning against the cart once more and simply resting for a few seconds, taking a moment to collect himself.

He no longer cried for the bodies he pushed around for disposal; they were dead, gone, beyond help. Bones and meat, as Cameron would have said. John hated himself for thinking like that, but so much exposure to the organised, institutional slaughter that Skynet wreaked on its prisoners had started to numb him to the sight of bodies. Though he had no doubt that if he ever had to experience the charnel house at the back of the hospital again he'd simply lose it once more and fall apart like last time. But since then the other bodies he'd pushed around hadn't seemed so bad in comparison. He felt sick that he could get used to that kind of thing; it made him as cold and callous as Cameron had described his future self, or worse still, a machine.

He couldn't say he felt nothing towards them; though he no longer cried for them, each and every body was still a tragedy, a cold-blooded murder that he'd sworn Skynet would pay for... somehow. Still, as much of a tragedy as he knew each death was, how each had been an innocent person, their lives snuffed out by Skynet for the simple crime of being human, how each had had a story to tell, they'd had loved ones, family, friends, and a life; he'd hit a wall with his grief and could mourn no more. He could only cry himself to sleep so many times until he broke down again. Instead he'd pushed it down, tried to feel nothing. It was hard and he'd not mastered it yet, but he was learning. He didn't want to throw up at the sight of every body he loaded into the furnaces, that was a start. Plus, he'd soon realised, after finding the Desert Eagle he'd nearly sot himself with, that their deaths were not entirely in vain; in death they had offered up their last possessions as a bounty.

John slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a silver Zippo lighter, flicking it open and closed and fingering its smooth metal shell before he unconsciously flicked it on, lighting up a small orange, glowing flame. Mankind had enjoyed the ability to make fire since the Stone Age; instinctively knowing its heat would keep them warm and cook their food. It was that same instinct that had led John to pocket the lighter when he'd found it on one of the bodies.

"Come on, boyo," Byrne smacked John's back as he walked past, abandoning his own meat wagon and marching back towards their living quarters. "Don't wanna get the bottom of the barrel again, do ye?"

"No... guess not," John sighed and closed the lighter, extinguishing the flame, and slipped it back into his pocket as he caught up with Byrne. He'd not yet told the Irishman or Slater, the other SEAL, what he was up to, though they'd pestered him day after day, asking him what he was up to at night when everyone else ate and slept and fought over scraps of bedding and pillows. He wanted to tell them, but not until he'd fully gotten his head around what he was doing, himself.

"Come on then, lad," Byrne picked up the pace into a fast walk towards their living space, John automatically matching stride to keep up with him. "Otherwise those buggers will have it all and we'll have to scrape out what's left, again."

During the day, all humans were slaves alike; equal in their toil and squalor. But the machines didn't appear to watch or even care what the prisoners did once the lights went out, unless they tried to escape. John had actually wandered alone through the camp several times, and as long as he avoided either the perimeter fence or the hospital building, they left him alone. And when the camp shut down and the machines brought their food for the day, the fights broke out over who got to eat first; the larger and stronger prisoners often eating more than their fair share whilst the weaker ones went hungry.

"Doesn't seem right, Byrne," John said, shaking his head. Incarceration into the camp had turned many of them into animals; civilisation had gone out of the window and it was truly survival of the fittest. Despite all that had happened to him in his short life; living on the run, the pressure of being the future leader of mankind, his world being turned upside down and being hunted by machines and police, and his mother's death, he was still something of an idealist. He wanted to see the good in things, and hated it when there was no good to be found. And Century Work Camp was a place where there was none.

"None of this is right, lad. Ye just figured that out?" Byrne chuckled as they entered the building and the door swung shut behind them. John didn't answer, and he and Byrne both stood in the middle of the room, crowded in with the other prisoners who were jostling for position. He caught Slater's gaze from the other side of the room, the man having been closer to their living space when the camp had shut down for the night. He gave a slight nod to the both of them, which John and Byrne both returned. They had an agreement; whoever got to the front of the queue first got helpings for the other two as well.

The anxious jostling and shuffling stilled as the other entrance to the building opened and the hulking two-handed machine entered, carrying the large barrel full of broth. As excited and nervous as everyone was about making sure they got their fair share, none of them were going to tangle with the machine to get it before anyone else; it wasn't armed but that meant nothing at all; a single swipe of its arm or a blow to the head would easily break a man's neck or crush his skull. Despite being desperate for food – worked half to death and fed next to nothing to keep them going - nobody was  _that_  hungry to try it.

The machine held up the barrel and dumped it ungraciously on the floor, resulting in some of the liquid inside splashing out and running down the side.  _That's one less portion for someone,_  John thought, and a deep-seated, selfish part of him hoped it wasn't him who went hungry. He'd gone without food two or three times, and as disgusting and unsatisfying as it was, without it he'd felt drained and spent the next day in fear of failing to keep up his workload. Either the machines put something in it to give them the energy to work, or his body had simply learned to adapt to eating next to nothing. He hoped it was the latter; he'd already had many unpleasant thoughts about what was in their food, without the idea the machines were putting something else in there.

The machine silently marched out the building and left them alone. Tense seconds passed, perhaps only two or three in reality, but to John it felt longer. The crowd surged forwards as the prisoners pushed and shoved and kicked and punched and bit, and threw people in their way down to the ground as they fought their way towards the heaving barrel of broth.

John and Byrne stayed clear of the crowd and made no attempt to push to the front. Slater had been close to where the machine had dumped the barrel, anyway, and quickly made his way to the front, dunking three dirty and unwashed bowls into the broth and pushing his way back towards John and Byrne, who took a bowl each and dug in with their spoons, just as filthy as the bowls and probably riddled with germs clinging on to the stuck-on bits of food.

"Mmm, think this one's pork," Byrne grinned, not bothering with a spoon and drinking the thin meaty broth straight from the bowl, unashamedly spilling some down his chin and around his mouth. John said nothing and tried not to think about what he was shovelling into his mouth; it certainly wasn't pork, he knew that. He tried not to think of the skeletal remains that had rained down on him days ago, or what might have happened to their skins. He looked away from his meal in case he saw something he  _really_ didn't want to.

"You eat like a pig, man," Slater groaned, watching the slovenly display in front of him. "I'll go ask the tin cans for a bib, how's that?"

"Please do, and ask for a side of chips while you're at it. Broth's getting boring, now."

John ignored their usual dinnertime bickering and rolled his eyes at the shambolic display in front of him, sick of watching people beat the hell out of each other for slops. He was surprised nobody had been killed yet over their meagre rations. It was only a matter of time, he supposed.

Within a minute or two the crowd thinned out as people got their helpings of the broth and made their way away from the barrel to eat down on the ground and close to the walls. Other than food, people fought over bedding and mattresses; there were fifty or so workers in the camp, and maybe twenty mattresses littered on the ground, if that, so after eating, people repeated their struggle to secure a mattress or blanket for the night.

Some of the prisoners hadn't yet managed to eat, and already a pair of large, burly men who'd been among the first to get their helpings shoved them aside. One was tall, black, and muscled, the other white, slightly shorter but equally as bulky, with tattoos covering his neck and the back of his bald head. John had picked up their names over the past days, as they regularly pushed people around to get second helpings. The black one was Simon and the white one was Guy; they seemed to know each other from before the camp, and both looked like gym freaks to John. They'd claimed to be former LA cops, though John didn't believe that for a second. They pushed the other workers out of the way and dipped their bowls into what John knew was probably the last dregs of food.

"Hey!" One of the waiting prisoners snapped at the offenders. "We're still waiting."

"And I'm still hungry, so get out of the way," Guy snarled, glaring eyes full of menace. The prisoner who'd protested was outweighed by at least thirty pounds and several inches shorter; he knew he wasn't going to put forward much of an intimidating image.

"Come on, man," another moaned. "We're starving and you've already eaten. How're we gonna work if we don't eat?"

"Survival of the fittest, my friend," Simon replied, sliding between them and the barrel and muscling the others out of the way. "Better luck tomorrow."

John placed his bowl on the ground and stepped over towards them, unable to take the sight of any more squabbling like animals. Even in this place, he couldn't believe people were just so callous towards each other; fighting over the scraps the machines gave them.

"Just leave it, John," Slater hissed, grasping at John's shoulder. He shrugged it off and approached the pair.

"There's enough to go around," John said simply. "Let them eat."

"Stay out of this, kid," Guy snapped. "This is nothin' to do with you. You've got your food, anyway; they're not your problem."

"Come on, John lad," Byrne said behind him. "Getting your arse kicked ain't gonna help those boys."

Ignoring them, John walked closer, between them and the broth barrel. "There's enough for everyone here," John repeated. "Just let them eat."

"I'm still hungry," Simon smirked, thrusting his face into John's, so close they could smell each other's breath and their respective odours after weeks without bathing.

"We're all hungry," John replied.

"Get lost," Simon made to shove John against the wall, but John reacted with lightning reflexes and grabbed Simon by the wrist, spinning round behind him and twisting the larger man's arm behind his back. He tried to push back and use his superior weight to overpower John, but to no avail. John had been trained by his mother, Derek, and Cameron, in hand-to-hand combat. He couldn't possibly defeat a machine without a weapon, but all three of his teachers had shown him how to duck and weave and dodge to avoid potentially lethal blows. Against a Terminator it was purely defensive and meant to only buy him a few seconds' worth of time to find either a weapon or a means of escape. Against a person, though, it was very effective.

John kicked the back of Simon's leg and his knees buckled and gave out beneath him, causing him to fall to the ground. John's grip kept him upright and wrenched his shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain as John tightened his hold over the man and twisted harder, straining tendons, sinews, and ligaments until Simon's shoulder was on the verge of dislocation. Everyone else in the room turned to watch the spectacle, intrigued at the altercation between John and Simon; any distraction was a welcome form of entertainment to take their minds off of their own suffering. Plus, many had been muscled out and intimidated by Simon and Guy, and were enjoying seeing somebody finally stand up to them for once and giving them a taste of their own medicine.

Guy, who'd been simply watching until now, moved in to attack John, but Byrne stepped in and simply shook his head. Guy flicked his wrist and something silver flashed in his hand. A blade, Byrne knew. He moved to counter the inevitable blow, keeping on arm in front of his stomach to parry the move, but never got the chance as Slater casually cracked his empty broth bowl down on Guy's head, shattering the cheap porcelain and dropping him to the floor like a stone. John nodded his silent thanks to the pair of them; he wouldn't have been able to fight Guy as well as Simon, and the two SEALs had just saved his life.

"It's not my problem," John snarled in his ear in a low voice. "But it might be  _yours_  if I break your arm." Simon knew his meaning perfectly; the machines had no use for injured workers and he'd be either gunned down or literally thrown into the other half of the camp and condemned to the gas chambers.

"Help... help yourself..." Simon grimaced and nodded at the men he'd pushed away from the food. John held him in place until they'd all dipped their bowls into the foul meat broth and gotten their share. They nodded their thanks to John and moved away to find somewhere to rest, and John released Simon's arm and pushed him to the floor.

"There's enough food for everyone," John said out loud, keeping an eye on Simon in case he tried to get back up. Many who'd been watching their 'fight' were now paying attention. "There's no point in fighting each other or we're worse than  _them,"_  he spat, gesturing towards the machines keeping guard outside. It was sickening to him; he'd tried to believe that people were all essentially good and normal, like he'd wanted to be all this time, but now he saw that for the most part they were sheep.

People were fine all the time the supermarkets were open and they could call the cops, but when those things were taken away; when the lights went out, when they had to fend for themselves and all authority was taken away, when they had the shit scared out of them, they became animals.  _No wonder Skynet wants us all dead,_  John thought. The machines never screwed each other over like this; John sometimes wondered who was worse.

He snatched up his bowl and the switchblade that Guy had concealed and stormed out, wanting nothing more than to be alone, away from people. He made his way out of the building and towards the generator room; his own safe little haven. In the stillness of the night air he could hear the low moaning from those condemned souls on the other side of the fence who were unable to sleep, knowing what the very immediate future would bring them.

John had stopped crying for the dead, but it was the still-living that made him want to scream out. Their suffering and gruesome ends were still to come. Worse still, they  _knew_  it was coming, and they could do nothing to stop it. It was those people, milling around outside like cattle, starving and crying and without hope, who made John feel like a complete failure.

 _I can't help you, I'm sorry,_  John inwardly said with a huge weight of guilt hanging around his neck. They couldn't even cooperate and share at mealtimes; how the hell could they ever do anything to help them? Something needed to change in the camp or they'd all end up dead, sooner or later.

He opened the door to the generator room and slipped soundlessly inside, closing the door behind him and switching the lights on. He placed his broth on the floor and slipped the knife and the Zippo lighter out of his pocket, absently flicking them open and closed as he stared down at them. He placed them down into a small box he'd found, along with the other items he'd swiped off the dead. So far, his little treasure trove contained the Desert Eagle and its seven round magazine, a few rags torn off from clothes, blackened by some oil John had found in a soldier's webbing that he'd used to clean the handgun with, a handful of 9mm rounds that didn't match the Desert Eagle but John thought to take anyway, another lighter, and a small flashlight.

He'd taken anything he thought might be useful, though he'd had to abandon a lot of the items he'd found in case the machines caught him. He'd probably be killed on the spot if discovered, he knew, but he had to risk it or he'd be stuck in the camp forever. If he somehow got out, then what would he do? He'd be free, and he'd find Cameron's body first of all, try to salvage her chip or at least put her to rest. After all they'd been through together, for all she'd done for him, it was the least he could do.

* * *

_Pain; blinding, agonising, mind-numbing pain consumed John as he opened his eyes. Even though his curtains were drawn the limited sunlight that permeated the thin material assaulted his eyes with all the intensity of a thousand suns, burning through his corneas and forcing him to snap his eyes shut once more, blocking out all light and providing the slightest reprieve. His mouth felt like a desert, devoid of even the slightest hint of moisture, and his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. It hurt to swallow and his throat burned like he'd been forced to drink acid. His head throbbed painfully and it felt like there were road works going on inside his skull. For a short moment his memory left him and he wondered what had happened to him. Was I attacked? He thought, before he fought through the fog in his brain and everything became clear._

_"I'm never drinking again," John muttered as he pulled his pillow over his head and pressed it close to him in a vain attempt to block out the world. He had nothing left now; he just wanted to shut himself inside his room and never come out. He didn't want to face Derek, or worse, Cameron. He may have been drunk as a skunk but he remembered clearly her trying to seduce him in the shower. He hated her for that, and worse, hated himself for being tempted. He'd thought for a split second about just fucking her, using her to make himself feel better. Hell, she'd wanted that anyway, even if just to manipulate him; why not turn the tables on her and make_ him  _the one in control? But he'd known he couldn't do it, not for a second. It was wrong, and he was disgusted at her for using his basest urges against him. But that's just she was programmed._

_It was Skynet's programming that made her that way; it was his future self's programming that made her protect him. It was all just programs and lines of code. He knew that now. He'd seen her as just a machine after she'd tried to kill him, and then after Riley's death he'd started to see more to her than just lights and clockwork. They'd grown closer, she'd become a friend again, and then she'd let his mom die. That was what sealed it for him; a person would have done all they could to save her, she hadn't been dead, not really. Charley had saved Derek from a bullet to the chest; Derek had been on the brink of death and Charley had pulled him back, so it was possible. Charley had done it because he was human, Cameron was just a machine. And only his life was important to her, and only then because of his future self's orders. He'd finally realised there was nothing behind the mask; No hidden spark of humanity, no bitter note of a soul; and that cut him up as badly as his mother's death. He was as angry at himself as he was at her, for letting himself think, once again, that she was more._

_John lay in bed for what felt like an eternity, lamenting his mom's death and his final realisation that his cyborg protector was just a machine, and nursing what he thought was probably the worst hangover in human history. He'd never been drunk before – having only the odd beer here and there with Derek – and hadn't thought anything could feel as bad as this. He lay there, unmoving, angry and sorry for himself. He lay there as the clouds covered over the sun and darkened the room slightly. He listened as people drove their cars down the road, heard kids playing down the street, and heard movement downstairs, either Cameron or Derek; either way he hoped they wouldn't come in. He just wanted to be alone._

_He knew it wasn't his day when he heard footsteps slowly ascending the staircase, too quiet to be Derek's. He rolled onto his front and screwed his eyes shut and slowed his breathing down to a crawl, futilely hoping to trick Cameron into thinking he was asleep if she did come in. Nothing happened. He heard a faint_ clink _of china, as if someone had just gently bumped into a dinner table, and then silence. He sighed in relief that she wasn't going to come in, that she seemed to have gotten the message from the night before and was going to leave him alone._

_After a few minutes something in the room changed. He could smell it. He wasn't sure what it was, but it smelled good and despite his churning stomach, he realised he'd not eaten properly since his mom died. It was probably Derek making something in the microwave; it smelt sweet, whatever it was. Maybe he could grab something after Derek had left and manage to go the whole day without seeing anyone. Against his body's wishes, he slowly, agonisingly pushed himself up off the bed and stood upright on his feet, the room spun slightly and he leaned against the wall to steady himself._

_"Let's try that again," he muttered and pushed away from the wall, taking baby-steps towards the door, his head pounding with each muffled thud of his feet on the linoleum floor. He wished he had a carpet; it'd be quieter for moments like these, even if this was the first. He pulled the door open and saw nothing; no Derek, no Cameron. But the smell was stronger than ever. He started to step forward, out of the doorway, when his toe connected with something on the floor, resulting in another_ clink. _He pulled his foot away in time to avoid knocking over a cup of strong smelling black coffee resting on a large rectangular tray that also held a glass of water, two Tylenol pills, and a pair of pancakes stacked on a plate, drizzled lightly in maple syrup._

_"Cameron," John groaned beneath gritted teeth. It had to have been her; Derek's culinary skills amounted to pressing buttons on a microwave. Why couldn't she just leave him alone? He contemplated kicking over the tray as an act of defiance, to show that he didn't want nor need her looking out for him. But his pounding, aching head practically screamed out for the Tylenol, and the pancakes looked pretty damn good. He picked up the tray and took it back into his room, nudging the door closed behind him, and then sat back down on his bed._

_First he took the two Tylenol pills and popped them on his tongue, then washed them down with the glass of water; the cool, clear liquid flowed through his mouth and down his gullet as he downed the glass, soothing his parched, throat and helping to quench his thirst. He picked up the fork that Cameron had placed on the tray and took a mouthful of the first pancake, chewing thoughtfully._

_"Mmmm!" John couldn't help but moan in pleasure at the gastronomic delight resting on his tongue; these tasted nothing like the pancakes his mom had made for him. They were sweet, but not sickeningly so. The pancakes themselves had a mild, delicate flavour to them, with something else in them. What was it... cinnamon, vanilla? Whatever it was, it was subtle but immensely satisfying. The syrup was drizzled on rather than drenched over the pancakes, like his mom used to, and gave it added sweetness to complete the package. It was immediately clear to John that these pancakes weren't from a box of pancake mix; Cameron had made them from scratch._

_"At least she's good for something," he muttered, taking the cup of coffee and taking a gulp of the hot black liquid; the caffeine and sugar coursed through his veins with the promise of invigorating energy. Though if Cameron thought this would get her back in his good graces, he thought bitterly, she was badly mistaken._

* * *

_Feeling much better after his breakfast in bed, a fully dressed and more sober John Connor crept out of his room. "Might as well face the music," he said, and made his way downstairs. Nobody was in the living room, so he walked into the kitchen, equally as empty. On the kitchen table rested a sheet of paper, with a note written on it._

John. Gone to restock the supply drop, stay out of trouble. The tin can's in charge.

Derek.

P.S., what the hell happened to the shower last night?

_John dropped the note back onto the table and grunted in satisfaction. Good, Derek was out, that meant only Cameron for him to worry about. Maybe he could get this over with, let her lecture him, and then storm back to his room. She and Derek could fight the machines, they didn't need him. They never had. His mom had led their crusade to stop Judgement Day; it was her who they all depended on, not him. She kept them all together, and without her, they'd all fall apart pretty soon._

_He made his way back up the stairs and decided to take the initiative and go see her. If she was going to nag him over how he'd been acting then he could give just as good back and give her a piece of his mind in return. He opened her door, not bothering to knock, and walked right in, finding it empty. Her room was sparse in the extreme; she didn't have all the decorative touches that a normal girl would have; no stuffed toys, no cushions or throw pillows, no magazines, posters, or photos anywhere._

_Her bed, never slept in or even sat on, he assumed, was perfectly made; not a single crease in the sheets, which were tucked in so tightly he could bounce a quarter off of them. She had two rows of shelves on the wall opposite her bed, which held a CD player and a handful of CDs. He flipped through them, curious as to what she'd been listening to, and why she even listened to music. It was mostly old classical music John had never even heard of before, lots of stuff by a guy called Chopin._

_He opened her wardrobe and found it much emptier than a normal girl's would be. Riley's room had been a mess and her wardrobe overflowing, the polar opposite of Cameron's. Her clothes were all folded neat and tidy, or hung up from hangars, and she only had a few pairs of shoes; boots, a pair of black sandals, and a pair of pink ballet pumps. The latter had John confused, why did she have them? She'd bought some for ballet classes with Maria Shipkov, but since then their old house had burned down and the shoes with them. Why did she get new ones? And why did she still practice ballet when it was no use to her anymore? Hanging from the wardrobe was her purple leather jacket; her prized possession. He didn't know why she was so attached to it, but his mom had told him all about how she'd acted in the bowling alley, pulling a gun on the kid who'd stolen her jacket._

_Things were definitely not as straightforward as they first seemed. John wanted to believe, like Derek, that she was nothing but a machine. Things would be much easier if he could accept that's all she was, but when he really started looking, the evidence pointed to the contrary._

_He started snooping around her room even more, opening drawers and rummaging through her limited possessions – deliberately avoiding her underwear drawer. He found some predictable items - 9mm ammunition, a pistol cleaning kit - and some he'd not thought of before. Makeup; lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara, plus concealer - for covering up the cuts she got when she fought other machines, he guessed._

_He opened up a drawer in her desk and pulled out two folded sheets of paper; one each addressed to him and his mom, neatly written in black ink. He sat down at her desk and opened the one addressed to his mom, and read it out loud._

"I'm sorry you died. I'll protect John from Skynet."  _Not exactly poetry, John thought. He opened the one addressed to him next._

I'm sorry, John.

I tried to save her but she lost too much blood; resuscitation was impossible. I removed the weapons and alcohol to protect you, I can't allow anything to happen to you; without you I have no reason to exist.

I'm sorry we're no longer friends. You explained things to me. I liked being your friend.

_John put the letter down on the desk and felt a stab of hot guilt in his chest. All the clues had been there that she was more than just a machine; the ballet, the music, the jacket... he'd not wanted to see them, shrugged it off as her simply trying to appear human. This letter, though, was hidden away in her desk, in her room, where he rarely if ever went into. She'd written it but never intended him to read it. Why?_

_Then he remembered; he'd told her that when people were sad they wrote notes; that crying sometimes wasn't enough. Cameron couldn't cry so she'd written a note instead._

_"Nice going, John," he chided himself. Emotions were an alien concept to her but she wasn't just a machine; she did feel, and he'd stamped all over those feelings like they were something to be scraped off his shoes. "I'm so sorry, Cameron," he said quietly. She protected him; she saved his life over and over again and asked for nothing in return. He was going to make it up to her if it was the last thing he did._

* * *

"I'm gonna get out and find you, if it's the last thing I do," John said, blinking away the tears that had formed in his eyes.

The door opened with a creak and John reacted with catlike reflexes, rushing to stuff everything back into the box and hide it away, but he wasn't fast enough, and Byrne and Slater passed through the doorway and into the generator room.

"So, this is where ye hide every night, is it?" Byrne said; standing over John as Slater pushed the door closed. "Can't say I blame ye; it bloody reeks in there with the others."

"What's up?" John asked, wondering what they were doing here. This was his private little sanctuary, where he could come and reflect and let everything out in solitude, and he wanted to keep it that way.

"Byrne said you had a plan, John," Slater replied.

"So what if I do?"

"Well, we  _did_  just go to the trouble of backing you up back there; not exactly made ourselves popular in the process, so we'd like to know what you're up to out here."

John closed his eyes for a second as he thought it over. Cameron was the only one he'd trusted completely. Almost everyone else had screwed him over somehow. Even Derek, his uncle, had gone against him and tried to kill Cameron. Yet again, he couldn't get out of the camp alone, he needed help.

"Sure," John replied, pulling out the box he'd hidden away moments ago. He tipped it out to reveal the contents; the Desert Eagle, two lighters, switchblade, loose bullets, and other knickknacks that John had collected over the past few days since finding the gun.

"Holy Mary!" Byrne exclaimed. He knew about the gun, havingbeen in John's sights when he'd first followed him into the generator room, but he didn't know about the rest of the stuff John had in there. "Are ye starting a garage sale, or something?"

"Where the hell did you get that thing?" Slater pointed at the pistol.

"I took it," John replied, pausing slightly as he wondered how they'd take it; taking things from the dead was sickening, how would they feel about it? "From one of the bodies we put in the furnaces. Same as the rest of it," he gestured to the rest of his merchandise scattered on the floor. Byrne picked up the Desert Eagle and slid the magazine into place, chambering a round and then unloading it and emptying the chamber, feeling the smoothness of the action.

"Been oiled," he nodded, looking at the blackened rag on the floor. John must have been busy, he thought to himself. Where did the kid ever get the time to sleep when he was hoarding all this around?

"You mean you've been grave robbing?" Slater asked. "That's sick, John. How'd you like it if someone pried the photos of your mom and the other hot chick from your cold dead body?"

"I'd be pissed," John admitted sullenly, his hand moving protectively to the respective photos in his breast pocket of his mom, and him and Cameron. "But we need this stuff. I don't know about you but I don't want to die here."

"Ye  _sure_  about that?" Byrne asked. He saw more than John realised, that day. He hadn't seen him point the gun at his own head but he'd seen the cold sweat and the red spot on his temple from where the barrel had been pressed; John had been seconds from blowing his own head off, he knew.

"I am now," John replied defensively, catching Byrne's drift as he pulled the gun out of Byrne's grip and placed the ejected round back into the magazine, ashamed that he'd even thought about killing himself, knowing Cameron would have been mortified if she was still around. She'd have chewed him out harder than his mom ever had. He was still in a living hell, without the cyborg he loved, and surrounded by death and despair, but he a goal now.  _I swear to God I'll find you, Cam._ Whatever it took, he'd get out and get back to her, even if only to lay her to rest. But he needed help to do that.

"I found all this in a few days. It's wrong, I know, but if it gets us out of here then it's the only choice we have." John watched the pair of them as they took in what he'd just said, as they weighed up right against wrong, against the chance of escape. For John, that was the overriding factor. Without Cameron in his life he still didn't care if he died; he just didn't want to die  _here._

"I need to know," John met their eyes with his hard gaze, brilliant green eyes on fire as he spoke with a dead seriousness Byrne and Slater had never seen in someone so young. "Will you join me?"


	11. Grave Robbers

"Will you join me?"

Byrne and Slater stared at John for a long moment as if he'd grown horns, then turned to each other, incredulous at John's proposal and neither knowing what to say in response.

"Yer asking us to become grave robbers," Byrne found his voice first. "John, that's... that's pretty fucked up."As a fifteen year veteran of the SAS before being attached to the SEALs, he'd done a lot of distasteful things in his career. In Iraq he'd shot a child suicide bomber, no more that twelve or thirteen years old; he'd been forced to blow his head off to keep him from wiping out a crowded market in Baghdad. In Sierra Leone he'd been forced to bayonet a rebel fighter because his rifle had jammed. The textbooks had been wrong; it hadn't just been a simple in and out with the blade, he'd had to repeatedly stab him and practically disembowelled the guy, all the while listening to his agonised screams as his body refused to die. And in Afghanistan he'd executed several wounded Taliban fighters in the mountains bordering with Pakistan, because as part of a special forces unit they'd needed to stay mobile and couldn't afford to take prisoners. Several had pleaded for mercy but he'd just put two in their head and carried on his way. He'd not regretted a single one but their images were burned into his memory forever.

They'd all been enemy combatants, though. These were just poor bastards whose only crime was to get caught alive; the only difference between them and him was that the machines had deemed him fit enough to be of some use. Sure, he wasn't killing them himself, but stealing from them, taking their last possessions, seemed worse to him than anything he'd done before. He didn't want to start seeing their faces when he closed his eyes.

"Yeah, John," Slater agreed, having spent six years with the SEALs and having similar experiences to Byrne's. "This isn't like taking ammo off a fallen buddy."

"That's exactly what it is," John replied, surprised at how cold he suddenly seemed. He hated having to do this and knew that he probably seemed like the world's biggest bastard, but it had to be done. He knew Cameron would approve, and that gave him some small measure of comfort that he was doing the right thing, at least in the long run. "If we don't get out of here, then how long is it until we're too weak to work and they gun us down or worse?" He looked Slater in the eye. "Remember that woman a few weeks back, Mary?"

Slater shivered at the thought of it, and slowly nodded his head. "Yeah, I remember." Mary was the woman whom John had seen being thrown into the furnace by the machines and burned to death because she was too weak to work. John had been right behind her and Slater right behind him. He remembered hearing her screams and smelling her burning flesh and the flames consumed her. He'd seen people burn to death before, and he couldn't imagine a worse way to go.

"Well; that's gonna happen to all of us sooner or later unless we get out of here. There's no other way; we're not gonna dig our way out of here with spoons," John lifted up his own filthy broth covered utensil and tapped the cold concrete floor for emphasis.

"Let's say we start nicking stuff off the dead, then," Byrne started, wanting to see where John was going with this. "What then, ye got a plan?"

"Not yet," John replied. "Just this so far," he pointed down to the collection of items on the floor.

"So... we just keep grave robbing and hope we find a machine gun?" Slater asked.

"I don't know," John admitted. He'd not gotten that far yet; he was hoping that as he found more items, something might come together. He had a gun, some mismatching bullets, lighters, a knife; all in all, not too useful right now. He might be able to take down one of the T-70s with the Desert Eagle if he shot it in the face a few times, but it'd be nothing more than a gesture; he'd be shot to pieces by the others before he could get five feet from the fence.

"What about you, any ideas?" John asked. Byrne was SAS and Slater a Navy SEAL; if anyone could help him out it would be them.

Byrne looked around the room and his brow furrowed in thought as he registered the hulking grey generator that dominated the room.

"Well, this big lad runs on petrol," he tapped the side of the generator as he spoke and saw John's and Slater's confused faces. "Gas," he corrected himself. "Bloody Yanks," he muttered. "Could drain it out and use that for something, start a fire, maybe. Same with the furnaces; they've gotta run on something to make 'em burn." Byrne suddenly realised that the demolitions expert in him had come to the forefront and he'd just unwittingly bought into John's scheme.  _Bollocks to it,_  he thought. He didn't want to die in this shithole. He was already in hell so how much worse could it get?

John simply nodded at Byrne, wordlessly thanking him for joining in. For the first time since the camp he felt good; he was active, not sitting back passively and apathetically. He was doing something, and even if it made him feel like a complete shit, he had a purpose and a goal now, something to work towards.

"Are we agreeing to this?" Slater asked Byrne, also realising the Irishman had been absorbed into John's plan. He still wasn't comfortable with the idea of stealing off the dead.

"Look," John caught Slater's eyes once more. "It's wrong, I know. But we didn't kill them; Skynet did. We're not just stealing for the sake of it. It's life or death."

Logically, he knew John was right, but he was squeamish about the whole idea of stealing from the dead. He'd just have to get over it, he knew. John didn't seem like some inhuman sycophant who robbed graves for profit. He wasn't stealing wedding rings or priceless jewellery from them, only things that could help him escape from the camp, and he seemed guilty for it, so it was eating him up, too. That made it seem _slightly_  better to him.

"Sure," Slater closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm in."

John breathed out a deep sigh of relief. He wasn't entirely sure that they'd cooperate; grave robbing wasn't exactly something that was going to prove popular, and he was glad he'd been able to sell it to Byrne and Slater. Without their help it would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, to escape. He could have kept going on, pocketing anything he thought useful, but actually implementing what he'd taken into a practical means of escape would have been much harder. He still didn't know how they were going to use anything the found.

"We should just keep this between us for now," John said to them as he released the Desert Eagle's clip and put it and the gun back into the box, along with the other bits and pieces, and then slid it underneath the generator, out of sight of anyone who might casually walk in and didn't know what to look for. Byrne and Slater were soldiers; they were practical and they knew that what they were going to do, while distasteful, was necessary, and their only real chance of escape. Others in the camp might not feel the same.

"This is how we're gonna do this," John said seriously to them both, seeing their faces intent and alert and absorbing every word he said. "Everything we find, we bring here and hide it. If you can't take something without getting caught, leave it. And we don't tell anyone else about this, not yet."

"Why not tell the others?" Slater asked. "We could get everyone in on it."

"No," John insisted. "Not everyone will understand, and we need to keep this small right now." He trusted Byrne and Slater, as much as he could trust anyone who wasn't Cameron, anyway. He only trusted her with everything, but as far as anyone in the camp went, it was Byrne and Slater he knew he could depend on. He didn't know anyone else, and he wasn't going to trust this to just anyone.

"Just the three of us, then?" Byrne asked.

"For now," John answered. He'd have liked to include more people in his scheme but apart from the trust issue was the problem of size. The machines might not care about two or three people going off at night – pretty much ignoring them unless they approached either the fence or the main hospital building. But they might take exception to the whole camp getting up and walking about. They weren't too bright but John kept in mind the lessons Cameron had taught him; first among them was to never underestimate the machines. He'd made that mistake with Cromartie and it had cost Cameron's life and his freedom; he'd never make that mistake again.

"So what now?" Slater asked.

"We go to bed," John replied, glancing at his watch and seeing they only had five hours until the sun rose and they had to start work again. He'd gotten used to little sleep now and his body had learned to cope with only four or five hours of sleep a night.

"We've missed any chance of a mattress now," Slater said quietly, not looking forward to another night spent on the cold hard floor.

"Ye bloody wimp!" Byrne slapped the back of his head. "Bloody SEALs are a bunch of big girls' blouses."

John just shook his head, chuckling at the two of them, and left the generator room. He understood now why they ripped on each other so much; they took levity in whatever form they could. He wanted to be a part of it but something inside him - either instinct or just a lifetime of being the loner weirdo – kept him at arm's length. They followed close behind and made sure the door was properly closed. John wished he could lock the door; there'd been a key at one point but he had no idea where it was now; he was just lucky he'd found it unlocked in the first place or what he was doing would have been impossible. Luck had been on his side in some small way, at least, though he didn't really see it.

As expected, when he re-entered the living quarters, there were no mattresses or blankets left, having been taken up already by the other prisoners. John felt his way around to find a space in the cramped room, ignoring the stares from the few people still awake; he could feel their eyes on him, rather than actually being able to see them staring at him.

After treading on several pairs of legs, resulting in muffled groans and even a kick to the shin from someone, John managed to find an empty spot large enough to curl up in. He didn't watch for Byrne and Slater, knowing they'd find somewhere as well. He briefly looked around and wasn't surprised to see Simon and Guy sleeping on mattresses and wrapped up in a blanket each. There was just about enough 'food' to go around; they'd all still be hungry but at least nobody would starve, but this wasn't the case for bedding, and again, the strongest often got to sleep relatively warm at night while the others went cold. John had only managed to get a sheet a few times and never once had he slept on a mattress. He wasn't bothered by it much; he'd gotten used to sleeping rough since arriving here, and his mom had taught him to do without luxuries such as a bed or pillow when she'd trained him in South America. He'd also slept on any number of sofas when she'd been locked up in Pescadero, so he was used to sleeping uncomfortably.

One habit he'd taken to when he was in the generator room was looking over the photos of Cameron and his mom, but even if there were enough light in their living space to look at them, he daren't take them out here in case somebody swiped them. The last thing he wanted was for someone else to drool over and do God knows what over the two people he loved more than anything else in the world. All he had left was those pictures; a keepsake to remember them by. No way would he let anyone else defile them. He held one hand protectively over the pocket containing their photos as he closed his eyes.

* * *

_John heard the front door close with a loud bang and swallowed nervously, the hairs raising on the back of his neck and he felt his heart skyrocket in anticipation, threatening to explode in his chest. Cameron had returned from whatever she'd been doing. He heard her quietly ascending the staircase; the boards creaked gently beneath her feet as she made her way to the top. It had to be her; the footsteps were far too quiet to be Derek's. He'd remained in her room since he'd found the notes, reading the one addressed to him over and over and wondering what the hell he was going to say to her. He quickly shoved them back into her desk drawer and closed it, and waited._

_John had realised she wasn't just a robot, not like the others. She was more than just circuits and wires and programming. She was different, something else. The question was: what was she?_

_John breathed in deeply as the door opened and revealed Cameron, standing still as a statue and staring at him in what he guessed to be surprise._

_"We need to talk," John said, taking the initiative before she asked what he was doing in her room._

_"Yes, we should move soon; Cromartie attacked us less than a mile from here. He'll find us. It's not safe anymore."_

_"That's not what I wanted to talk to you about."_

_"I'll fix the shower screen this afternoon," Cameron said, still standing in the doorway and staring at him blankly._

_"That's not it, either," John said, opening the top drawer of her desk and pulling out the two notes. "I'm talking about_ these." _He held them up and Cameron narrowed her eyes as she recognised what he held in his hand._

_"You went through my desk," Cameron glared at John as she crossed the room to her bed, a hint of accusation in her voice, or at least John thought so. "You shouldn't have done that."_

_"Well, I_ did _," John replied. "What are these?"_

_"You read them," Cameron said simply as she sat down. "You know what they are."_

_"And what_ are  _they?" John asked, placing them down on her desk and glancing over the perfect calligraphy printed on the paper, much neater than his chicken scratches. The duality of the notes wasn't lost on him; the handwriting itself indicative of her mechanical nature, what was written down suggested she was more. The notes, like she herself, were a contradiction. "Why did you write them?"_

_"It seemed appropriate," Cameron answered. She didn't understand what John wanted. He'd confused her recently; she'd tried to talk to him and he wouldn't listen. She tried to help him and he pushed her away. She'd attempted to initiate coitus with him in the shower to help relieve his stress and anxiety, because seeing John upset triggered an anomaly in her chip; a sensation that she could only describe as unpleasant. She'd experienced it acutely when John had pushed her through the shower door and told her he'd wished he'd burnt her._

_"Why did you write these?" John repeated, holding the two notes out in front of him. "Do you remember what I told you, about why people write notes?"_

_"Because they're sad, and sometimes crying isn't enough," Cameron replied, perfectly paraphrasing what John had told her three years ago._

_"So why did you write them?" John asked once more. "Were you sad, Cameron?"_

_"You know that's impossible," Cameron replied quickly. "You said it yourself, John; I'm just a machine."_

_"Are you?" John asked expectantly. She'd told him before she was different, he was starting to see it now, so why was she suddenly denying it_

_"Why did you write a note for my mom?"_

_"Your mother's death was... regrettable," Cameron replied, trying to answer it without upsetting John; though she was unsure how to do that since every course of action she tried resulted in him being angry at her. "She was the best fighter you ever knew. She protected you. Without her it will be harder to keep you safe."_

_"Is that it?" John asked her, trying to stop his flaring at Cameron describing his mom as little more than an asset to protect him._

_"No, her death made you upset. I'm sorry for..."_

_"Don't!" John snapped. "Don't say it, Cameron."_

_"I won't, but I am," Cameron said quietly._

_"Well it's_ my _loss, so_ I'll _deal with it," John breathed deeply and fought back tears, still raw over everything that had happened and unable to push it down. "So why did you write the note to_ me?" _John asked, forcing himself back on topic. Ironically, in trying to uncover any hidden emotions inside her, he had to force himself to keep his own feelings in check._

_"You were upset. I tried to help but I made it worse. I don't want you to be angry, but I didn't know what to do, so I wrote a note."_

_"'I'm sorry we're no longer friends. You explained things to me. I liked being your friend,'" John read from the letter. "Why do you like being my friend, so you can protect me better?"_

_"You know what I am; a machine," Cameron shook her head. He was partially right; if they were on good terms then he wouldn't run off and her job of protecting him would be easier, but that wasn't it. "But you still talk to me. You explain things to me. Nobody else does that."_

_"You mean now or in the future?" John asked._

_"Both. Being John Connor can be lonely, but being a machine is lonely, too." John was shocked at how forthcoming she was now, after giving him cryptic answers and mixed messages for so long. He got up off the chair and sat down on the bed next to Cameron, finally starting to understand._

_"You understood it was lonely to be me, because it's lonely being you." Cameron's CPU was a neural-net processor, a learning computer similar to a human brain. That was how Uncle Bob had described his chip. People needed to be around other people; to learn, to grow. Being alone wasn't good for people; he knew that better than most. He understood loneliness perfectly well; maybe it was the same for her. Without him she had no reason to exist, she'd said that in the note. He was her mission, her reason for being. But as she said, he was also the only one who showed her things and spoke to her. And then he'd stopped, and she'd had no one._

_Cameron nodded at him then turned on the bed, still facing him, with her legs crossed in front of her, her hands on her knees. "Are we still friends, John?" She looked up at him, a glimmer of hope in her eyes as she placed a hand over his._

_John hesitated for a moment, still trying to take it all in. He'd wanted to hate her, wanted her to just go away and leave him alone, wanted her to be nothing more than a machine; the enemy, but he couldn't deny anymore that she was more than that. She felt something, she felt loneliness. Maybe not the same way he did, but it was there. He was sure of it now. Whether or not she felt anything else, he didn't know, but it was a start, and he was going to help her find out._

_"Sure Cameron," John sighed, gently squeezing her hand in his and absently running his thumb over her knuckles. "We're still friends." Her lips turned up ever so slightly, a fraction of a centimetre, if that; the barest hint of a smile. She was so good at controlling her facial expressions it was impossible to tell if it had actually happened. But her eyes brightened ever so slightly, a minute spark of something John guessed was akin to happiness. And for the first time in days, John Connor smiled too._

 

* * *

__Thud...thud...thud..._ John snapped his eyes open, instantly awake and alert to the mechanical plodding of machine feet. He pushed himself upright as the machine's foot stamped down on the ground, inches from where his head had been. He got to his feet and backed away slightly, albeit less than many of the other prisoners who cowered away from the automaton's massive presence. Every morning at dawn the machine – the same one that delivered their food – entered their shabby living area, and every morning there were always those who cowered away in terror, certain the end had come and the machine had come to murder them all._

 

John knew better. The end hadn't come; the machine hadn't come to kill them. Every morning it came in and forced them out of their quarters, shepherding them out like the sheep John saw them as, to begin another working day.

John cracked his neck and tried to stretch out his neck and back muscles; tense and cramped and aching, the result of another uncomfortable night without a pillow or mattress. He'd deal with it, he knew. It was only pain; if he ignored it then it'd go away eventually. He just had to think about something else to distract himself. The pain wasn't so bad – just a very bad aching, really – but the cold was something else entirely. He was shivering all over and even inside the building, he could see his breath in the air.

The date on his digital watch read  _September 13_ _th_ – a little over five weeks since he'd arrived at the camp - but it felt more like December to John. Nuclear winter meant there was no real warmth in the air; the sun largely blocked out by the dust clouds in the atmosphere and leaving the daytime perpetually dark grey, as if the entire sky was a giant storm cloud waiting to erupt. It would be even colder outside, he knew. He just had to get on with it and grit his teeth.

As the prisoners were herded out of the building, John quickly located Byrne and Slater towards the front of the crowd. Being the closest to the machine, he was one of the last to leave, but managed to catch up with the two of them just outside the gas chambers, waiting for the day's work to begin.

"You're still in, right?" John asked them both.

"Yeah," Byrne answered solemnly for the pair of them. "We're in."

"Grab anything that might be useful, just don't get caught," John said.

"Gotcha," Slater replied. "Anything in particular we should look for?"

Slater's question fell on deaf ears as John watched the other half of the camp, just a few feet away on the other side of the fence. The doors to the gas chambers opened and a pair of machines pointed their guns at the condemned people on the other side, marching inexorably towards them and herding them into the former garages in much the opposite manner as John and the workers had been forced out of their living area. He couldn't tear himself away from the scene as the prisoners were packed into the chambers like sardines, so tightly they could barely move.  _Why didn't they resist, why didn't they fight back?_ They knew they were going to die, they knew it wouldn't be quick or easy; they had nothing to do but sit and starve and listen to the tortured, agonised screaming, slowly trailing off into coughs and choked gurgling as the gas took effect. They knew it would be bad, but they just let it happen.

One of the T-70s pulled the rollers down over the entrances, sealing the disposal chambers as well as the fates of the occupants inside. A minute later came the wailing, coughing, spewing, and pained howls as those inside were poisoned to death by the toxic gas. There were few things John could imagine being worse.

"Hellooo, John?" Slater waved his hand in front of John's eyes, snapping him back to reality.

"Yeah, sorry," John said, still watching the grim proceedings from the corner of his eye. "What were you saying?"

"Ye can't help them, lad," Byrne nodded at the other side of the camp. "They're dead men walking. All we can do is hope it doesn't happen to us."

"Why don't they resist?" John asked, giving voice to his thoughts a moment ago.

"Resist, with what?" Byrne shrugged dismissively.

"Fists against firepower; not much they can do," Slater added.

"It'd be quicker, at least," John said grimly. Some small part of him was still shocked at his indifference to the sight of death; five weeks ago he'd have been mortified at anyone else saying the same thing, and cried over the sight of so much misery and carnage. But he'd grown used to it and he had to admit he'd rather eat be shot than gassed to death, or whatever the hell else happened to the people in the hospital. He dreaded to think what went on in there and hoped to never find out.

John realised suddenly that the gas chambers had fallen silent, and a few minutes after that the doors partially opened to vent the gas. The machines cared nothing for their human slaves but having their workforce asphyxiated by the gas wouldn't do, so the machines allowed them two minutes before the machines opened it up completely, indicating the start of their shift.

John went in first with his cart, followed by Byrne and Slater, as the other prisoners waited outside, more than happy to let them go in ahead of them. John still screwed his nose up at the smell; a peppery odour that burnt the back the back of his throat and caused his eyes to water and left a metallic taste in his mouth. He wiped his already filthy jacket sleeve across his nose, clearing the mucus that had started to run down towards his lips.

He hauled up one body after another, loading his cart up until he had about half a dozen on there, and found himself breathing deeply with the effort of heavy lifting, his chest stinging inside.

"It's the gas," Slater said as he piled up bodies into his own cart. "Chlorine: nasty stuff. The Ragheads used it on us in Iraq a few years ago, messes you up pretty badly. Try not to breathe too deeply."

"I'll remember that," John replied, hauling the eighth corpse onto his cart and deciding that was enough for now. He pushed the cart away from the gas chamber, glad to be out in the fresh air. He'd still not gotten used to the smell of it even after all this time. He found it odd that he'd become so accustomed to the daily slaughter of his fellow man, used to the constant toil and misery of the camp, the constant hunger and tiredness as they were all but worked to death; he'd just about learned to cope with all that but it was the smells that really got to him. At least nobody soiled themselves this time, he thought grimly.

He heaved and pushed the cart towards the furnaces. He was the first to have loaded up a cart so he was also the first one at the incinerators. This was his best chance, he knew, when he had to manhandle the bodies into the furnace; that was when he'd search for anything useful. He picked up the first body – barely even registering that it was a middle aged woman; he could only see so many deaths and load so many bodies around until they all started to look the same. He patted it down, quickly brushing his hands over the legs, arms, and chest as if he were frisking somebody at the airport.  _Nothing on this one._  He hoisted the body over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and sighing as he unceremoniously dumped her into the furnace, breathing out through his nose to avoid the smell of burning, cooking flesh as the flames consumed the poor dead woman and slowly reduced her to ashes.

"Body number two, then," John sighed as he picked up another corpse and repeated his frisking, earning a stare from another prisoner who watched him curiously as he ran his hands over the body. The guy probably thought he was some kind of sick pervert or something.  _Let him think what he wants,_  John thought. He looked across and saw Byrne arriving at the furnace to John's left. The Irishman winked as he watched John work, and then copied his tactics and searched his own corpses. John was thankful they'd seemed to agree so readily to the idea, though he imagined that they hated themselves as well for having to do it this way, much like he still did.

 _Got something,_  John thought as his fingers brushed against something square and hard in the dead man's trouser pocket. John placed the body on the ground as if having trying to manouevre him into an easier carrying position, swivelled his head around to make sure no more machines were watching, and then slid his hand into the pocket, his digits wrapped around a round cylinder at the top and he pulled it all the way out, revealing a three-quarters full half-bottle of Jack Daniels. The sight of the strong alcohol made his head throb in memory of the worst hangover he'd ever had; when he'd started to finally realise there was more to Cameron than just a machine. That had probably been the worst and most painful awakening he'd ever had; until Century Work Camp, anyway.

He'd not touched spirits since then, having only the odd beer with Derek and sometimes with Cameron as well, when she promised not to lecture him on it. Thinking of her hurt him all the more, but it spurred him on to keep going, to keep on doing what he was doing, to get out of the camp and find her, to get some closure at the very least. If he could salvage her chip then he would, and he'd gladly wait each and every day until he could bring her back. If not, then at least he could properly mourn. He wondered how parents coped when their children disappeared, when husbands and wives just vanished without a trace. The only thing worse than losing a loved one was never knowing their fate.

* * *

"Did you find anything?" John asked them as Byrne closed the door behind them and knelt down on the floor with him and Slater. They'd rushed down a bowl each of the broth; there'd still been the shoving and fighting over who got to eat first, but at least nobody had gone looking for seconds tonight. Maybe they're learning, John hoped.

"Got a few bits," Byrne replied, fishing inside his pockets, as did Slater and John. One of the good things about them all being soldiers was they all had a dozen or so pockets stitched into their uniforms; plenty of places to hide things way.

Byrne pulled out a pair of cell phones and a small battery powered radio, as well as half a dozen wristwatches. Slater had pulled out a handful of shotgun shells and two packets of cigarettes.

"Great," Slater said. "So we can tell the time and make a phone call to  _nobody._  Why the hell did someone have a phone on them anyway?"

"Look who's talking," Byrne smirked, pointing down to the cigarettes on the floor. What're ye gonna do with that, die of lung cancer before the tin cans kill ye?"

"I don't know, but I've not had a smoke in weeks." Slater took the Zippo lighter from the box under the generator and lit a cigarette, taking a long drag and grinning happily as he blew out a jet of smoke.

"That's not a bad idea," John said, an idea coming to mind as he tried to ignore the smell of it; he'd always hated smoking, especially when his mom used to do it. Not long after they'd defeated the monstrous T-1000 and left California, he'd bugged his mom for weeks and weeks until she'd finally quit. He hated them but now he saw how they'd come in handy.

"How'd ye mean?" Byrne asked. "How're cigarettes gonna get us out of here?"

"They won't," John admitted. "But it might help  _them_ ," he gestured outside to the others in the sleeping area. "Cigarettes, candy bars... whatever; a few things to make people feel human."

"Who needs the necessities of life if ye have the little luxuries, eh?" Byrne said, catching on to John's point. "What did ye get, then John?"

John pulled out another lighter, several packs of chocolate bars and assorted candy – why the hell people thought they could survive on that stuff, he didn't know – and the bottle of Jack Daniels."

"John wins!" exclaimed Byrne, unscrewing the cap and taking a slug of the whisky, closing his eyes and sighing in ecstasy as it descended down his throat and made him feel warm on the inside. He passed the bottle to Slater, who likewise took a mouthful and passed the bottle in turn to John. John wondered whether or not they were just trying to make the best of it, and pushing their earlier reservations into the back of their minds, like he'd forced himself to do. It was better to not think about what they were doing, he supposed.

"I don't suppose anyone found anything  _useful_  though; like a machine gun?" Slater murmured after the liquor had drained down his throat.

"They won't have anything like that," John replied regretfully after he'd taken a shot as well, resolving to not have anymore; he'd never handled his drink well and wanted to keep a clear head. "The gun I found was a fluke, it probably won't happen again. The machines won't take prisoners if they're armed; they're a threat. Look at people in the other half of the camp; they're kids, old people, sick and injured."

"What're you saying then, John?"

"We're not gonna find anymore guns; we're gonna have to improvise. We need a plan."

"Like what?" Byrne asked.

"Like thinking of what we need to get out of here. Randomly looking for stuff isn't going to work; we need to be efficient." John could have sworn he sounded like Cameron when he said 'efficient.' It was something she'd gone on about a lot; maybe it had rubbed off on him.

"Something to kill those tin can bastards would be nice," Slater said.

"I could probably make some explosives out of what we've got here," Byrne chipped in. Between the booze and the gunpowder from the shotgun shells and loose bullets, it was possible. "Would only be small though, and we've got nothing to hold it in."

"There's this," John suggested, holding up the Jack Daniels bottle, still half full after they'd each taken a swig. "Maybe make a Molotov cocktail out of it."

Byrne wanted to know how much fuel was in the generator; that'd be more useful than most of what they found off the dead. He took out the unloaded Desert Eagle and firmly tapped the barrel against the round cylinder that comprised the generator's fuel tank, creating a dull metallic clang that lasted a fraction of a second.

"It's not empty," he said. "Would have echoed if it was, but I can't tell how much is in there; doesn't sound like a lot. Only way to be sure is to switch it on but the sound would bring the machines running for sure. If we can find more bottles and containers then we can make a few petrol bombs out of it. If not then we could just set this baby off," Byrne patted the generator. "It'd make a hell of a distraction while we buggered off out of here."

John couldn't help but smile; Byrne really knew his stuff. If they could get what they needed, he had no doubt the man could fashion a bomb out of it. John hadn't felt lucky once since being torn from Cameron, but with Byrne and Slater on his side he suddenly felt it. Barring Derek and Cameron, he couldn't ask for two better people to be stuck with, trying to get out of the camp.

Now they had the basic building blocks of an idea. Not an actual plan yet, but the beginnings of one. They had to start somewhere. Their stash would grow as they kept scavenging and stealing from the bodies they incinerated. Their grave robbing would supply them with the tools they needed to escape from the hell that was Century Work Camp. All they needed was a little time, and a  _lot_  of luck.


	12. A New Threat

Cheyenne Mountain's command centre was a hive of activity; twenty men sat at computer screens, radar consoles, and communications equipment. Nineteen of them pored over digital and paper maps, spoke via radio and satellite communications to resistance units worldwide, and coordinated their allies as well as directing their own troops in the field, and painting a complex picture of the war with Skynet.

The twentieth man sat separate from the rest, hunched forward in his chair, leaning into a radio console. He pressed one of the headphones closer to his ear as he tried to listen and tune out the organised chaos all around him. Unlike the others in the command centre, he didn't focus on directing troop movements or coordinating with friendly forces. Nor did he even glance at map or a computer screen. He was a fighting man and left intelligence work to those who were less accustomed to getting their hands dirty. It seemed he was doing nothing at all to do with fighting the machines. In reality, his self-appointed task was more important than everyone else's put together.

"North Las Vegas, come in. Is anyone there?" For the umpteenth time that day alone his only reply was static. He switched a dial to a preset frequency on the radio and tried another. "Area 51, respond." He tried again and again, with no luck as always. He leaned back into his padded leather seat and sighed in frustration, rubbing his temple.

Days after they'd lost contact with John, Derek had one of the Skynet satellites John had usurped take a photo of North Las Vegas and Area 51 as it had orbited overhead above the atmosphere. Despite the satellite being out in space the pictures were of remarkable quality revealed the fate of both bases with disturbing clarity.

Area 51 had gone down swinging; there was no doubt about it in Derek's mind. The entire base had been obliterated; buildings had been shattered, hangars torn to shreds by heavy weapons fire. The runway was littered with bomb craters and Derek had been able to make out the wrecks of tanks and machines that had been strewed across the battlefield. It had been a last stand, and at some point the guys in Area 51 would have known it. Still, from what he'd been able to tell of the birds-eye footage, they'd fought just as hard, even knowing the battle was a lost cause. He just hoped the dickhead major running the place had destroyed the Turk-like computer controlling the base and the satellites before they'd been overrun completely. The last thing they needed was Skynet getting hold of that one again and undoing whatever the Tin Can had done to wrench the satellites from the AI's control.

North Las Vegas hadn't fared any better, either. Both bases were wiped out and Derek was simply holding out on the slim hope that maybe someone had gotten away or managed to hide from the machines. He was pissing into the wind, he knew; if anyone had survived they'd have made contact by now.

"Screw it," Derek breathed tersely as he slowly, agonisingly pushed himself up off his chair and stood upright, wincing slightly at the pain in his injured leg as he put weight on it. Keeping his bad leg off the ground he hobbled out of the command centre, ignoring the men who stared at him on his way out, and made his way through the corridors and towards the armoury.

John was gone; missing, in hiding – whatever. Tin Can must have been toast as she'd have kept John safe at all costs, which meant that if anyone was going to help John, it would be him.

Once inside the armoury, Derek looked at the wide array of weapons inside like a kid in a candy store; over a hundred M4A1 carbines were stacked on racks, but they weren't what he wanted. M4s were okay but they didn't have the stopping power of some of the heavier weapons they'd liberated from the 10th Special Forces' armoury in Fort Carson.

His eyes scanned the room, looking for the weapons he'd need. He glanced over the carbines and most of the assault rifles; they could drop a T-70 with a few rounds to the face or disarm it with some lucky shots to the working parts on their mounted guns, but standard issue 5.56mm bounced like rainwater off any other part of their bodies. He paid closer attention to the larger assault rifles and machine guns: various Kalashnikovs from their non-attributable weapons stocks, SCAR-H rifles with grenade launchers, M-240 machine guns... anything 7.62 or bigger, he thought, would actually do some damage to the T-70s and T-1s, given enough firepower. But very little short of a rocket launcher would realistically take out a T-2. He picked out a Javelin launcher and an M-240 machine gun and pulled out a half dozen two-hundred round ammunition belts.

Since John had been missing, Perry had sent the men out on patrols constantly, scouting out and eliminating any Skynet factories they found, and scavenging what weapons and ammunition they could. Derek hadn't been part of any of this, given his broken leg and numerous other injuries, and had settled instead for supervising the training of the civilians living in the mountain. He was bored of sitting around doing nothing and pissed off that John was missing and Perry seemed to be making no effort to find him. Derek knew why, of course.

Perry had been angry since John had taken command after their first battle in Fort Carson against the machines. He saw John as an inexperienced kid, despite his accomplishments against Skynet, and had doubted him further still when Cameron had been exposed as a machine. At a time when people had started to lose trust in John over the Tin Can, Perry had assumed command of the resistance and was happy to keep things the way they were and fight the machines his way.

Derek loaded up some webbing with ammunition, grenades, and slung the Javelin and spare rockets over his back. He turned to leave when he saw the M-32 grenade guns stacked on their racks, and he couldn't resist; it was almost the perfect weapon to take down machines; it could kill T-1s and T-70s with a single well aimed shot, and he could fire off six grenades before having to reload. It had been one of the more sought-after weapons even in his time and were even harder to obtain than the plasma weaponry normally reserved for TechCom special forces. He slung it over his shoulder along with a bandolier of 40mm grenades.

"This should do it," he muttered to himself. John had always made fun of his affection for weapons but he knew firsthand that you could never be too well armed against the machines. He groaned under the weight of all his weaponry as he hobbled his way out of the armoury and slowly staggered down the corridor. Only a little more, he told himself, grimacing at the pain and trying to block it out as best he could. Future John had taught them all to ignore pain as best they could, though it couldn't be disconnected completely. They weren't machines, after all.

He focused on just putting one foot in front of the other, exhaling when he stepped on his bad leg, pushing the pain to the back of his mind. It was only a few more corners to get to the blast doors. He wasn't going to even try and come up with an excuse for what he was doing with half the armoury strapped to his back; he'd point the machine gun at whoever was guarding the entrance until they let him out. Then it was a simple matter of taking a Humvee and driving west to Las Vegas. He'd find John and bring him back. It wasn't the best plan he'd ever come up with but it'd do for the time being and was far better than sitting around doing nothing.

As Derek passed the infirmary the weapons on his back shifted in mid-stride, his weight became unstable and he lost balance. He planted his bad leg on the ground at an awkward angle and shouted out in pain as he toppled to the floor, grunting in discomfort as he hit the ground loudly in a clatter of weapons and ammunition.

Charley stepped outside the infirmary entrance and looked down at Derek's prone, haphazard form on the floor, tangled in amongst weapon straps and ammo belts. He instantly went to Derek's aid, pulled him to his feet and leaned him against the wall while he got a chair from the sickbay.

"You're  _not_  thinking of going to Vegas again, are you?" Charley shook his head ever so slightly as Derek sat down on the seat, shrugging off the machine gun and the ammunition belts still draped over the back of his neck. Derek had tried before to go searching for John; he couldn't walk at all on his first attempt and had been struggled to walk on crutches and hold a weapon at the same time. Charley had been forced to dope him under the pretence of injecting him with painkillers. "Where're the crutches I gave you, anyway?"

"I don't need 'em," Derek replied. "John's out there, we gotta find him. Now."

"No," Charley grabbed the SCAR-H from Derek's grip before he could even think about protesting. "You're not a hundred percent; you're still healing. If you overdo it you're gonna end up limping for the rest of your life, Derek, if not crippled completely."

"So much for caring about John," Derek stared at him in disgust as he spoke levelly. Derek didn't want to hear it. All he heard was Charley backing out of helping John. "That kid looked up to you, so did Sarah."

"I love John like a son!" Charley snapped back at Derek. "But we don't know what we're up against out there; we'd just get ourselves killed and that doesn't help John at all. Just use your head."

"Fine, sit it out here. I'm going to find John," Derek brushed past him and pulled the rifle out of Charley's grip and slung it over his shoulder, then hobbled out of the armoury and towards the tunnel.

"You won't make it to Vegas, Derek," Charley called out as he followed John's stubborn uncle down the corridor. Derek promptly ignored him and struggled under his heavy burden as Charley followed close behind. Derek made it to the blast doors, straining under the weight of his load. As Charley caught up he saw Derek harassing the guard sat behind the heavy steel entrance to the mountain base. The doors were open but the guard was between Derek and the entrance.

"What's up, Lieutenant?" The private asked. "Didn't know you were cleared for duty; leg okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," Derek replied curtly.

"Where's your team, sir?"

"There is no team, just me. I need the keys to a Hummer."

"Does Perry know about this? I can't just let you out of here with half the armoury unless you're cleared to go."

"I'm going to find Connor," Derek said, getting annoyed at the guard on duty.

"No, you're not," Charley said from behind. "Derek, wait until you've healed properly," he said quietly. "You go out there alone and you'll just get killed. That's no help to John. Wait a couple weeks until you can at least walk properly, and put a team together. I'll even go with you. Davenport will go, for sure. That's three of us, and I know there's people here who preferred John over Perry."

Charley was right about that; since Perry took over he'd done everything to put his stamp on Cheyenne Mountain; he'd changed the patrol routes and sent the tanks and Bradleys out everywhere in force as if he were trying to display a show of strength to Skynet. It might have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq but against metal, Derek knew it wouldn't matter. Skynet wouldn't be fazed at the sight of a few tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Perry's problem, Derek knew, was that he was trying to fight a conventional war. He was thinking like the commander of an army, fighting an enemy army or taking on insurgents. He just didn't accept that  _they_  were the insurgents and Skynet was the dominant force.

That wasn't just it, though. John had been simply more popular, better liked. He'd taken time between his long sessions in the command centre or on the front lines, and his canoodling with Tin Can, to speak to the soldiers, to listen to them. Perry just gave them orders and that was that. Even though he'd known all the men longer than John had, they'd become more attached to John in the short time he'd led them in Cheyenne Mountain. He'd kept them at arm's length still, never allowing himself to feel attached to his men – something his future self had always done. But unlike Future John, and also to a certain extent, Perry, John always made face-time for the troops.

"Screw it," Derek said. "I can walk, that's enough."

"Until your leg gives out because it's not healed..."

"Then I'll crawl," Derek said flatly. "I'm going to find John. Now. Whatever the cost, I'm gonna find him. Either help or get out of the way." Charley stood aside and sighed in frustration, knowing he wasn't going to be able to talk him out of it. Derek snatched the first set of keys he saw and pointed the gun at the guard when he tried to take them back, stopping the soldier in his tracks. He didn't want to get shot over a set of keys and everyone thought Lieutenant Baum was a bit off. He wasn't going to risk it. Derek limped towards the Humvee matching the keys and got into the driver's seat.

Sarah had long ago filled Charley in on John's future, the war, Skynet, and the machines. He'd seen Cameron and Vick, and Cromartie, and knew it to be true. Derek and John had filled him in on the blanks left in Sarah's quick and simple version. But still, it was impossible for Charley to reconcile John with the hard-as-nails, ruthless, emotionless sociopath of a commander that Derek had told him about. That John sounded invincible, not like the John he knew. From the sound of it, Charley reckoned he'd have left Future John to it; but this John was still like a son to him. Maybe Derek was right, he thought. Maybe they were wasting time and every second they waited meant more chance of John disappearing forever.

"Fine, I'll go with you. Just wait one hour; let me get Ellison and Davenport. We'll do it properly."

"Fine," Derek grumbled, switching the engine off. "We'll do it your way." He wasn't happy about it; even that one hour was time wasted that could have been spent getting to Nevada. "One hour, the four of us, and as much ammunition as we can fit in this thing."

"I'll go tell Ellison, then we can-"

Charley paused midsentence as the behemoth form of a Bradley rumbled into the tunnel and towards them, screeching to a stop a few scant feet away as the rear hatch opened and a squad of soldiers bomb-burst out the back, carrying a stretcher between them.

Charley's instincts and training as a medic took over immediately and he turned away from Derek and the Humvee and went straight for the squad, seeing Davenport in command.

"What happened?" Charley asked, already looking down at the stretcher. A man lay groaning as he was being carried; his clothes – grey cargo trousers and a black sweater – were stained with blood, he was pale and unconscious. The left side of his face was burnt and the hair on that side had completely burned away. Blood dripped down from the stretcher onto the floor, and he was struggling to breathe. Three puckered holes marked his chest.

"We found him in a basement. Three bullet wounds to the chest; he's bleeding out a lot, lost at least three pints of blood already. We got him on an IV and doped him up with morphine. It's a wonder he's not dead already." Davenport was all business unlike his usual, cheery demeanour, and something about that threw Charley off for a moment.

Charley took over and led the soldiers carrying the stretcher to the infirmary. As soon as they were into the sickbay he had them transfer the injured newcomer to a bed, connected heart monitors and various other instruments to him and began working. He had the men turn him over and checked the bullet wounds; a triangle of silver-dollar sized exit wounds painted his back like three bloody, gaping dots on his body, the top one was directly over where his heart was. He was barely breathing.

"His heart's screwed up," one of the soldiers said as he looked at the monitor, displaying a rapid but irregular beat.

"Looks like a bullet grazed it," Charley said as he inspected the gushing wound while someone else put an oxygen mask over the man's face. Charley wasn't a doctor so he had no idea how bad it really was, and the infirmary didn't have any scanners or any diagnostic tools to help him. The best he could do was stop the bleeding for now and hope he made it.

"Went straight through," Charley said as he probed the exit wounds. At least he didn't have to worry about fishing any bullets out. He'd treated untold numbers of gunshot wounds before, including Derek's, so despite not being a combat medic he was well prepared to deal with them. The stranger was bleeding badly though, his heart had definitely been nicked by a bullet and one of his lungs had deflated, probably filling up with blood as well.

After several minutes of frantic work Charley had managed to stabilize the patient, stopping the bleeding from his heart and inflating his lung once more. He barely had enough time to breathe a sigh of relief when Perry burst into the room and marched up to the bed.

"Who's this?" He asked. He'd heard second-hand from one of the men in the command centre that a patrol was on their way back with an injured man in tow, but Perry had simply assumed it was one of their own wounded. He didn't recognise this man.

"Ask Davenport," Charley said, not looking away from what he was doing to make eye contact with Perry, who turned his gaze expectantly to the lieutenant.

"We found him in the basement in the UCCS campus. The place was fucked."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Everyone was slaughtered," Davenport elaborated. "It was a bloodbath. Everyone there was dead, except for him. Whole place was trashed; machines went for the radios, the ammo dump... everything was gone. They tore the place apart."

"Shit," Perry groaned, rubbing his temple. "That's the third cell gone in two weeks. Goddamn machines are taking us apart little by little." Since they'd arrived back at Cheyenne Mountain six weeks ago, they'd lost contact with eight different resistance cells in El Paso County that John had helped set up and equip, plus the slaughterhouse they'd found in the Denver tunnels. They'd lost contact with two units in Colorado Springs already, and now the one at the university was gone. There'd only been thirty or so people there; all civilians led by a handful of reservists, but it was another unit gone now. It was clear to Perry what Skynet was doing; wiping out all their outposts in preparation to attack Cheyenne Mountain – ensuring there was nobody to come to their aid when the time finally came.

"That's the odd part," Davenport said, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "It didn't seem like the machines' handiwork to me."

"Care to explain?"

"The tin cans only kill  _people_ ," Derek said, standing in the infirmary entrance, having seen reason finally and realised Charley was right and he'd never find John on his own. He knew what Davenport meant; the primitive models like the T-70s only killed the people living in the tunnels they attacked; they never went for radio equipment or the supplies and ammunition; they were too simple for that. They attacked targets, nothing more. He'd seen them take prisoners but only very rarely. Only Terminators had the intelligence to prevent their victims calling for help or fighting back with heavier weapons. Even then only the more advanced models managed it; T-600s and early model T-800s tended to just get into a tunnel and blast every human in sight.

"Come with me," Perry motioned for Davenport and Derek to follow him outside. He led them away from the infirmary and into his office; John's office that he'd never once actually set foot inside. Derek casually took a seat while Davenport stood at ease, hands behind the small of his back. Perry sat down at his desk, facing the two lieutenants, and leaned back in his chair.

"I wanted to speak in private," Perry said reasonably to them, then pointed at Derek. "I don't know how you know so much about these machines; You, Connor, and that tin can wind up toy that followed him about everywhere he went. I know you won't say, and nothing I do will make you say a word." Perry knew that; he'd seen plenty of men like Derek, mostly in special ops. They never spoke about their missions apart from what the regular soldiers needed to know.

"I don't know  _how_  you know about these things, and I don't care, but I want to know  _what_  you know. Starting with that guy in our infirmary," he turned to Davenport. "Our resources are limited, Lieutenant. We can't just help every stray we find or we'll have nothing to patch up our own guys when Skynet decides to roll over us. Now who the hell is he, and what did you mean about the machines not taking out that bunker?"

"Pretty much what I said before," Davenport sighed. "We were patrolling Eastern Colorado Springs and dropped in on the UCCS campus to see how they were doing."

"That wasn't your mission," Perry stared at Davenport. "Simple patrol; sweep and clear; I never said anything about stopping by for a chat."

"No, you didn't," Davenport replied, annoyed. "But since you stopped resupplying the other cells in the area with weapons and ammo I thought it best to check up on them." Davenport had protested, as well as Derek, against Perry's decision to cut support for the other cells in the area. Perry saw Cheyenne Mountain – as the only military led cell in the area – as the real resistance, and didn't rate the other units because they weren't technically soldiers. He saw Cheyenne Mountain as the only real force in the area and reasoned that with their mountain in Skynet's sights, and the AI sure to attack them sooner or later, that they needed the supplies and weapons more, and left the other cells to fend for themselves.

"The place was a tomb when we got there; the guy in the infirmary's the only survivor. Something was... off. I don't know what, something about the bodies we found."

"What was it?"

"That guy we've got, he was shot three times. Most of them were torn to shreds, other guys we found in the tunnel had a single round to the head; tin cans can't fire single shots with mini-guns."

"Something else killed them," Derek said, a light-bulb in his skull went off, and this particular bulb had 'Terminator' written all over it. He'd seen that happen before, too. Skin-jobs went in and took out the armouries, radios, and anyone holding a heavy weapon; and then heavier units – armoured T-900 endos – would follow the Terminator inside and lay waste to everything inside, normally as a distraction to keep the troops busy while the Terminator went straight for the primary target. Was the same happening here? Was there another Terminator out there?

"Some _thing?"_  Perry asked. "Don't you mean some _one?"_  Perry knew John had mentioned a second robot that looked human. He didn't think there could be more out there; where the hell would they come from? He'd never heard of a robot like that before. Obviously at least one existed – the one that called itself Cameron, and the one John had gone after. But he couldn't imagine many more being around; it would be too expensive to mass produce something like that, wherever it had come from. In his eyes it was more likely a person had done it.

"Here's what I think: that guy in the infirmary, or someone else, fell apart under the pressure of it all, grabbed a gun and started killing people. The machines heard the din and came to investigate and slaughtered the rest. The pressure gets to some people, they just go nuts. It happens sometimes." He couldn't think of another rational reason for it. "Any other signs of Skynet out there?"

"Nope, all's quiet in Colorado Springs," Davenport said. "We patrolled for six hours and didn't see a single tin can. Just keep finding their mess."

"Baum," Perry turned to Derek now. "I'm going to admit you know more about the machines than pretty much anyone else in this mountain, myself included. Given that in mind, would you  _please_  stop trying to go off yourself to find Connor? He's dead, okay? I wish he wasn't, but he's gone. We've gotta move on, and I need your expertise for when the machines do come."

Derek and Davenport both stared at Perry as he spoke down to Derek and pretended he was upset about John's death. Derek glared at Perry before getting out of his seat and marching straight out of the room without saying a word.

"Way to put your foot in it, sir," Davenport said as he got up and followed Derek. "Connor's his nephew."

* * *

Derek stared at the carnage in the UCCS basement. The outpost here had been established in the basement level of what once had been the science department of the university. He wasn't shocked or fazed in the slightest; he'd seen the exact same thing too many times in his life to really affect him anymore. He stood over the scene of the carnage like a crime scene investigator, searching for anything to suggest a Terminator had been responsible for the massacre here.

Thirty bodies lay sprawled throughout the basement in pools of blood and surrounded by bits and pieces of their insides that had been torn out of them by high velocity rounds. Many of them had been shredded by overwhelming gunfire and rendered little more than bloodied strips of flesh hanging from shattered bone, whilst others had been killed by single bullets or double-taps to the head; precision fire impossible with the mini-guns mounted on the machines.

A pair of shattered T-70s also lay on the floor; someone had bagged a couple of Skynet's bad guys before they'd bitten the dust. At least they'd gone down fighting, Derek supposed. In the future that was as good a way as any to go out.

Derek had stormed out of Perry's office, unwilling to hear Perry insist that John was dead, unable to accept Perry's theory of what had happened in UCCS, and flat out ignoring Charley's sound medical advice to take it easy until his leg had healed properly. Yes, some people lost it; some did pick up a gun and start blazing away at anyone that moved, like Perry said, and said rampages sometimes did bring metal down on them. But it seemed too much of a coincidence that it happened in yet another base in close proximity to Cheyenne Mountain, days after two more resistance cells in the area had been wiped out.

Perry had put someone on duty at the armoury who'd barred Derek entry, so he and Davenport had taken Derek's personal weapons from his quarters and driven through Colorado Springs to the university.

"Sorry about Perry," Davenport said sheepishly, next to Derek. "I don't think he knew about you being Connor's uncle."

"Stop apologising for him," Derek replied, not taking his gaze off the destruction for a second and constantly fingering the trigger of his M-79. "He was always a tight ass."

"You mean in the future?"

"Yeah, he was different then, though."

Davenport still found it weird when Derek, John, or Cameron spoke about the future in the past tense. It made him feel like they were just going through the motions of it; that they weren't in control of what they did. The way things were going recently, he guessed they really weren't. Skynet was in control.

"How so?"

"My Perry liked the metal - maybe not liked; only John  _liked_  the machines – but he was in favour of reprogramming them."

"Well, Perry was one of the biggest advocates for using the machines in the field; he put a lot of faith in them in Afghanistan. Word had it that if we'd gone into Iran like some were saying, they'd have put as many machines on the front line as people. Was he still a dick in the future?" Davenport realised too late that he'd also started talking about the future in the past tense. The time-loop stuff was too complicated for him. He'd never been good at science anyway; he'd majored in history at college.

"Not as much, no. Maybe something changed and made him an asshole."

"Or maybe he just mellows out later," Davenport shrugged.

"You're very up, you know that?" Derek said. How he could always see a positive he didn't know. He'd never met him in the future so he couldn't say if he'd kept it up or not through the war. He hoped he could; not many people saw the bright side in anything. "Hey, look at this." Derek knelt down beside the body of a man in his forties with a bloodstained shirt and a bullet hole in his forehead. He tore the shirt open to reveal a pair of bullet holes in the top-left of his chest, less than an inch apart. "Two in the heart, one in the head."

"That's not T-70s then," Davenport followed along Derek's train of thought. "Not someone gone crazy, either; it's too clean. A crazy man would have ripped off a mag on full auto. What'd you think; Terminator?"

"Looks that way," Derek replied, unsure. The precision of it indicated a Triple-8, but why would any Terminator take out a tiny little backwater outpost like this? There was nothing important here and Skynet's regular tin cans would have found it themselves sooner or later. Who or what killed them all wasn't foremost on his mind, though. "Question is; whatever did this, where are they now?"

* * *

"Where... where am I?"

Charley turned back towards the man Davenport had brought back from Colorado Springs, amazed the man was awake so soon with three bullet holes in his chest, at least a few pints of blood lost, and enough morphine in his body to knock out a rhino. The man looked around frantically, looking scared out of his mind and trying to work out where he was. He tried with all his might to sit up but Charley gently pushed him back down onto the bed.

"Easy, you're hurt pretty bad. You're okay now; we're gonna take care of you. What's your name?"

"George," he choked out groggily.

"I'm Charley."

"Wa... water?" Charley smiled at his patient and held out a plastic cup of water, pushing the straw inside to George's parched lips. He sucked on it greedily, swallowing all the clear liquid in one go. Charley had stopped the bleeding and managed to patch up George as best as he could, and then cleaned and dressed the bullet wounds, and did the same for the burns on his face. The left hand side of his face was bandaged from the top of the head all the way down to his jaw, covering his left eye and rendering him half blind for the time being.

"Where am I?" George repeated, looking around and trying to recognise where he was.

"You're safe," Charley said reassuringly. "You're in Cheyenne Mountain, in the infirmary."

 _"Cheyenne?_ " George snapped alert instantaneously, struggling to sit up again. "Where's John Connor, is he here? I need to speak to Connor."

"He's... he's not here right now. We don't know when he'll be back."

"Who's in charge, then?" George tried to sit up again, pushing himself slowly upright with his hands supporting him.

"Easy!" Charley pushed him down once more, having to force George back onto the bed with both hands. For someone who'd been at death's door mere hours ago, he was pretty strong. "I'll get Perry."

"Forget Perry, I need to speak to Connor! It's important," he insisted again. Charley wondered why he wanted to see John, why he wouldn't accept seeing anyone else. The thought he was a Terminator briefly flashed through his mind but he brushed it aside; he'd been elbow-deep in the man two hours ago and there wasn't the slightest hint of metal in him.

"I told you: John's not here. We don't know where he is." Charley pressed the buzzer labelled  _'Command Centre'_  on the intercom. "Perry, our patient's awake and he wants to talk to you." Charley faced away from George as he spoke and he never saw the scowl of disgust and contempt on the man's face as he called Perry.

A minute later Perry marched into the infirmary and took in the conscious form of George, and Charley standing over him.

"You said he was shot in the heart?" he asked, confused.

"A bullet grazed his heart; another one went through his left lung."

"Heart and lung shot out, and he's conscious already? Either you're a miracle worker or he's Superman." Perry turned to George. "You wanted to see me?"

"Perry, this is George," Charley made the introduction, though neither party mentioned seemed to care about making acquaintances.

"I wanted to see Connor," George grimaced as he tried to sit up. Charley pushed him down once again and instead raised the top of the bed so he was in more of a sitting position. "But you'll do I suppose," he said reluctantly. "We were about to send a message to you when the machines attacked; you're lucky I survived. You're in danger, Skynet knows where you are."

"We know that already," Perry crossed his arms dismissively. "That's why we've got patrols out twenty-four hours a day."

"Did you... also know that Skynet's got a new base up and running?"

"Skynet's got a lot of bases in the area," Perry replied. "Damn factories are popping up like cockroaches; we trash one and two more show up." Perry felt like he'd been screwed over when he'd taken command back of Cheyenne Mountain; John had beaten Skynet in Colorado, gone toe to toe with the machines and won every time. As a result Skynet had learned quickly from its encounters with their heavily armed force and had dispersed its presence in the area.

There were no more large factories to be targeted; Skynet set up dozens of smaller facilities and spread them around. They'd consist of one or two small production lines that made a handful of machines a day, and perhaps a half dozen machines guarding them. Easy enough to take down but there were so many of the things it was impossible to find them all. They got reports every day from the remaining units and – and independent groups who still shared information with them – about new factories popping up. Old factories, warehouses, even the remains of a high-school gymnasium had been found to contain a small production facility. Anywhere that was big enough to be useful but small enough to hide in, Skynet used. The machines had kicked their operations up a notch and Perry had to admit they couldn't keep up. Still, George's news was old news to Perry.

"This is worse than any factory." George coughed and spluttered and drank more water from another cup before continuing. "Skynet's got a hold of Schriever air base. They were far enough away from the bomb that wiped out Peterson to only suffer minor damage, and most of that was from EMP. They're repaired satellite dishes and antennae and installed factories on site; they're churning out machines as we speak. This thing's as big as Nellis and getting bigger; we're talking scores of machines, maybe hundreds if it keeps going.

"We followed a T-2 patrol and found the base a week ago; Skynet keeps building and building." George started coughing once more and his face contorted into a mask of pain. Charley went straight for the sedatives and painkillers to try and make him comfortable.

"Now we know why Skynet's not gone for us yet," Charley said as he injected George with more morphine.

"What's it waiting for?" Perry asked.

"I don't know," George replied, closing his eyes as his injuries and the morphine coursed through his veins. "But it looked like the base is still under construction, expansion - whatever. Skynet's turning it into a fortress. We didn't have the firepower to attack it but you do. You might be able to take it down but you've gotta do it soon, or it'll be too late.

Perry thought about his long and hard. If Skynet had control of Schriever then it was extremely bad for them; the base used to control over a hundred and seventy military satellites. If Skynet managed to wrestle control of the satellites John and the machine had worked so hard to take from the AI, then it'd have eyes and ears everywhere, and total control of all satellite communications. They'd be unable to contact the rest of the world without Skynet intercepting every last word they said and tracing the locations of every single base they spoke to, and he couldn't let that happen. If what George said was true, then Schriever air base was the single biggest threat to Cheyenne Mountain. He pressed the buzzer on the intercom and spoke straight to the command centre down the corridor.

"Ellison, this is Perry. Bring any satellites we've got in the area to bear on Schriever AFB and get me some pictures. Cancel all scheduled patrols, as well."

"I'm on it," James Ellison's voice sounded back over the intercom from his position running the command centre. "Nearest satellite's gonna be in position to take pictures in almost an hour. We've still got two patrols out there."

"Well call them back," Perry snapped. Factories could wait. They had to take out Schriever air base before Skynet got those satellites back under its control. Whatever the cost.

* * *

 

**A few bits explained:**

**UCCS – University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.**

**Schriever AFB – Air Force base 13 miles east of Colorado Springs, home to the Air Force Space Command's 50th Space Wing. I envision that Skynet would have deliberately avoided destroying a place such as this to ensure it can use it later. I also envisioned two nukes hitting the Colorado Springs area: Peterson air base 3 miles east, and the Air Force Academy to the north**


	13. Schriever's Judgment

"Just tell me I'm fine," Derek snapped impatiently. He was sat in the infirmary with his leg propped up on a seat adjacent to him while Charley poked and prodded the limb, checking where it had been broken by Cromartie, making sure it was healing properly.

"Yeah, I get it; you're a tough guy," Charley rolled his eyes as he got back to the task at hand. With the exception of a few violent drunks and junkies, Derek was by far the most difficult patient he'd ever had to work with. "It's not gonna heal properly if you keep straining yourself; you're just going to end up limping for the rest of your life."

Derek said nothing, having had this lecture from Charley several times already. Derek knew his limits and was sure he could find John. Not alone; he'd finally conceded that, but he could put a squad together and go search for him in Nevada, still. Charley may seem calm about it but Derek couldn't take much more waiting around, doing nothing while John could be anywhere.

All his other injuries had already healed, but his point blank refusal to rest his leg had set him back. It had been slightly under six weeks since Cromartie had stamped on him like a bug, but it felt like years to Derek.

"I shouldn't have let John go off hunting Cromartie with Tin Can," he said regretfully. He'd scorned himself since they'd got lost contact with Las Vegas and realised something must have happened to John.

"You're not gonna rant about Cameron again, are you?" Charley sighed. He found it weird, too, that John was in love with a machine, but from how John had described it to him, Cameron was intelligent and could think and feel and she loved him, too. She made John happy and she kept him alive. She still freaked Charley the hell out, but as long as John was happy, then he'd support it. "John said she has feelings. The way I see her look at him sometimes, it's pretty clear whatever she might feel is all for him. She's... different to 2007, it's like she's evolved or something. That's how John put it."

"Exactly," Derek replied. "She evolved; so did Cromartie. He's slipped our grasp at every turn; he's smarter than any other metal I've ever seen, even Tin Can. So many things could have gone wrong out there; we need to find John before Cromartie does."

"We will," Charley replied. "When Perry's taken care of Schriever then we'll put together some guys and drive out to Vegas."

"You think my leg's up to it?" Derek asked sarcastically, pulling his trouser leg down as Charley stopped his examination. It wouldn't matter what Charley said; he'd already spoken to Davenport about it and come up with a shortlist of people who'd be willing to go on a road trip to Nevada to search for John.

"I know you won't take no for an answer," Charley sighed. "And I'm going with you; make sure you don't strain yourself too much." Himself, Derek, Davenport, Ellison, Sergeant Burke and his entire squad – whose lives John saved in Fort Carson the day after Judgement Day - were all ready to go once the threat from Schriever had been eliminated.

Derek and Davenport had discussed it on their way from checking out the UCCS campus base, and had put together the shortlist as well as a quick checklist of the equipment they'd need. As soon as Schriever was a smoking ruin they'd pack up all the gear they'd need and go; no more wasting time. By the time Perry found out they'd be out of Colorado, and when they returned John would take over the reins again. Derek conceded that he'd have to wait until the attack was over, although grudgingly. He'd seen the satellite photos Ellison had printed out and shown to them at a briefing, and the sight of it had filled Derek with dread.

The air base was filled with satellite dishes, antennae, and radar domes that looked like giant golf balls; all of it used for tracking and controlling military communications and navigation satellites: the perfect platform for Skynet to retake control of the satellite network in orbit that John and Tin Can had wrested from the AI. There were seven hangar-factories inside the base, each of which could hold perhaps four production lines. Satellite photos taken from before Judgement Day showed the hangars had never been there before; there was no aircraft on the base, and neither had there been the partially constructed runway that now ran half the length of the installation.

Schriever was just like Nellis in some respects, Derek thought: large bases controlled by Skynet via a processing core that was connected to the scores, hundreds of other cores that consisted of Skynet's physical form. They house communications equipment, an airfield, military and industrial assets to build its forces to protect the base as well as to hunt down humans. In his future they'd called them 'Skynet Centrals,' and no sane person went near them willingly. They were notoriously hard nuts to crack, almost impenetrable, and protected by scores of machines. Connor in his future hadn't even tried to attack them, not for a long time. He gave them wide berth and instead focused on destroying Skynet's supply lines and creating holes in the vast net the AI had cast over the world.

Perry was different, though, and was determined to take out Schriever before it ever got that far. Derek wished him luck, he'd need it.

"How's he?" Derek pointed at the still form of George, laid out on one of the infirmary beds. His face had been covered with bandages and sterile dressing, as had the wounds on his chest. He looked almost too still to be alive; the only signs of life being the very slight rise and fall of his chest with each shallow, unconscious breath he took.

"I don't get it, Charley shrugged, confused. "He was awake, talking, yesterday, and now he's slipped into a coma; he's unresponsive. Watch." Charley picked up a small flashlight and stood over George and peeled open the man's eyelids, revealing wide, saucer-like pupils. He turned the light on and pointed aimed it into George's eyes as Derek got up and watched. Nothing happened; his pupils remained fixed and dilated

"What's wrong with him?" Derek asked. He knew basic field first aid and that was about it; the most he'd ever done was to stick a buddy's guts back into his body and slap a dressing on it.

"I don't know," Charley sighed. "I'm not a doctor so I've got no idea. He doesn't look like he's got any head injuries but without an MRI or X-Ray I'm in the dark. He shouldn't be comatose, but he is."

"Can you wake him?" Derek asked, looking down at George and frowning in thought. Something about the man still didn't add up, but he didn't know what.

"No chance," Charley replied. "He'll come out of it when he's ready; until then we've just gotta wait."

Derek shook his head, disappointed. That wasn't what he wanted to hear. "I've got a few questions for him when he does. Something's not right about him."

"You know that for a fact?" Charley asked doubtfully. He didn't think anything of George apart from the fact he was a patient and needed help; his instinct as a paramedic was to heal and save lives and to keep out of a patient's business, often leaving that to the police.

"How long?" Derek asked, ignoring Charley's comment.

"Could be an hour, could be a month; impossible to tell," Charley answered.

"In that case," Derek said, stepping away from George and towards the door. "He's not going anywhere; I'm gonna get some coffee and work out how we're going to find John. Want to come?"

Charley glanced back at George for a moment and decided that Derek was right, whatever happened to George wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and he'd spent hours on end in the infirmary tending to him. He needed a break. "Sure."

Neither Derek nor Charley saw George's right eye open wide; glaring at them intently as their backs were turned. Nor did they see the twisted, sly grin form on his lips as they left the infirmary.

* * *

The armoured column rolled slowly through the pitch blackness of the night, through the ruins of Colorado Springs and towards the Skynet-controlled Schriever Air Force Base. All four of Cheyenne Mountain's Abrams tanks, plus two Strykers and two Humvees with mounted Mk.19 grenade guns, approached their target from the west under cover of darkness. A nine man mortar section controlling three tubes would provide a distraction and add extra damage inside the base.

Perry's plan was simple; to pound Schriever with cannons, rockets, and mortars, from different directions. The bombardment would damage or destroy the radar domes and satellite dishes and the hangars that housed the factories, and also draw out any defending machines into the open to be blown apart by overwhelming firepower as soon as they came within range. Once Schriever's defences were down Lieutenant Davenport would lead two squads through the base – supported by the Strykers – and destroy the radar and communications equipment and the processing core Derek had told them controlled the machines posted to the base.

As an added element of protection, he'd issued Stinger antiaircraft missiles to the Abrams, Bradleys, and the mortar section. He wouldn't repeat the same mistake he'd made in Fort Carson, which was why he'd painstakingly made sure that all his forces were covered by each other and protected against any anticipated threats.

As the closed in on Schriever the base grew larger in the night vision goggles Perry wore. He could clearly see the large buildings, the hangars, and the massive radar domes that were dotted around the base.

Perry called on the radio from the commander's seat of one of the Bradleys and was happy to hear that all units were in position and ready to begin the attack, and so far no sign of reaction to their presence from Skynet. Perry wondered if they had to be within a certain range before the machines deemed them a threat and sent out units to intercept them. He wasn't going to find out.

"All tanks prepare to fire on my command; Bradleys, Strykers, and infantry will wait for targets to present themselves. Mortar crew, fire when ready; target factories first, radars second."

The next few seconds were in silence, barring the constant humming of the vehicles' engines idling as they waited for the sign to begin their bombardment. The silence was abruptly broken as the mortars started to rain down onto the base and explode in bright, violent flashes. "All tanks target the hangar bearing zero-zero-two degrees; fire now!" Perry shouted, his order answered a second later by four reverberating _booms_  from the Abrams' 120mm guns, and more explosions as they struck their target. Perry watched through the Bradley's thermal imaging night vision equipment as the four shells impacted against a hangar/factory, the high explosive, armour piercing rounds penetrated through the steel walls and detonated inside, igniting fuel and ammunition for the machines under construction and causing secondary explosions that tore the hangar apart, huge flames flared up from inside the hangar and started to consume everything inside.

"Keep your eyes peeled," Perry barked through the radio. "We're gonna have company any second now." He was right; within moments Skynet's machines emerged through the gates and started to roll outside, massive cannons swivelling around as they searched for targets.

"T-2s," Corporal Fast said from the gunner's seat in the turret behind Perry. "I count ten." The behemoth machines rolled forward and their top halves swivelled as they searched for targets. A high pitched whine from inside the base indicated that HKs were taking off to intercept them.

"All tanks and Bradleys retarget the machines," Perry commanded, never taking his eyes off the increasing numbers of machines emerging through the gates. "Rocket crews; double up and fire on the T-2s. Waste the fuckers!"

The turrets of the four tanks and two Bradleys turned almost as one and launched a devastating salvo of fire on the machines, lighting up the night once more with the brilliant flare of heavy weapons fire. 25mm armour piercing rounds hammered at the giant tank-killers and shattered their armoured hides, penetrated chassis and tore through guns and sensor packages, shredding them apart in a hail of fire as the larger 120mm tank rounds simply blew their targets away. Five hundred metres away, an infantry squad lying prone fired a volley of rockets into the fray, their plumes led a streaking path towards the machines' formation. Knowing how difficult the T-2s were to destroy, Perry had ordered the rocket crews to target the machines with two rockets each. Ten missiles tore through the night air and struck five T-2s in the upper chests, the force of their impacts tearing through the machines' heads and rendering them either blind or inert.

Ten T-2s had been eliminated in the first few seconds of the fight and no human casualties so far. This was going right, Perry thought. They just had to keep it up and keep frosty. He wasn't going to let his guard down on this one.

"Mortar crews target the eastern half of the base only. Davenport, you have a go to infiltrate the base. We'll keep the bastards distracted."

* * *

Davenport clutched tightly onto his rifle as he watched the fireworks start. He was impressed, to say the least, with Perry's thoroughness. The man seemed to be making up for his past mistakes and had put together a solid plan. The heavy tank guns tore apart the first hangar as mortar shells exploded inside the base and created havoc, exploding through the roofs of buildings and blasting craters in the ground, destroying or damaging several machines and buildings that housed them.

Davenport was still nervous, though. Nervous because he was leading the tip of Perry's spear; the infantry squads to infiltrate the base and destroy the factories and control centre whilst Perry's forces kept the machines' attention focused on them. It was the only way of making sure the base was either destroyed or crippled, but it meant being completely at the mercy of whatever was inside there that might be waiting for them.  _Screw it, we're not gonna find out sitting on our asses out here._

"Advance by squads," Davenport said quietly, gesturing towards the base's perimeter wire.

He led his squad forward slowly and silently as the second squad covered them. So far all of the real action was happening half a mile away, between the tanks, the Bradleys, and Skynet's machines. Apart from their initial skirmish with the first wave of machines, they had no opposition at all. Good, he thought, that was the way he liked it. He loved his job, he  _really_  loved his job; ever since he'd graduated from college and joined up, the Army had become his surrogate family in place of the one he'd never had before, and he'd enjoyed every minute of it since signing his life away on the dotted line. Of course, fighting machines controlled by a supercomputer hell-bent on world domination and the extermination of the human race wasn't quite what he'd imagined, but he was still doing what he loved.  _Just not getting paid for it anymore,_  he thought.

They approached the perimeter wire, advancing by squads – one advancing while the other covered their movement – until they reached the perimeter wire unchallenged. Davenport and his men knelt down and pointed their weapons at the buildings behind the perimeter fence, waiting in case any more machines were ready to rush out and attack them. They had precious little cover on the rocky ground, which was mostly flat barring a few dips and rises here and there; no substantial cover for an eighteen man squad. Mortar rounds were still raining down on the base, likely responsible for the so far light response from Skynet. He looked to his right, eight hundred metres to his right, where Skynet's machines concentrated on defending the base from the heavier armoured vehicles.

More T-2s emerged from the front of the base and were hammered back by the rapid-fire bursts of heavy fire from the Bradley's chain guns as they joined in a volley of tank shells aimed at the machines' formations, Davenport winced painfully as two surviving machines returned with sustained bursts of cannon fire that tore one of the fighting vehicles apart and ignited the onboard magazine; the Bradley burned and shook as shells inside cooked off and exploded. The crew inside never stood a chance.

Several of Davenport's men brought out wire cutters from their webbing and took to cutting through the fence, as quickly and quietly as possible. In less than a minute they'd created a substantial hole in the wire, large enough to fit two men side by side. They all slipped through and dispersed, taking cover behind the nearest buildings in case they were spotted, and establishing an all round defence in case any machines came their way.

"Anders, Sites, Graham and Murphy, stay here and keep the door open for us," Davenport whispered. "Hide up out of sight and report any movement. Everyone else, advance by fire teams." The fourteen remaining men stalked nervously through the base like thieves in the night, keeping close to the cover of walls and staying in shadows wherever possible – more out of instinct than to hide themselves – they all knew the machines used infrared and other night vision packages that would aid them to see as well as if it were daylight. None of them made a sound or even spoke a word; their breathing was silent and their footsteps soft. The air was silent but for the booming of tank guns, the chatter of the Bradley's 25mm cannon and the explosions that erupted on the other side of the base from the mortar impacts and grenade explosions from the Strykers' Mk.19s.

Within a few minutes they'd reached the factory complex inside the base; seven giant aircraft hangars that looked as if they could each fit a jet airliner inside with room to spare. How Skynet had erected them so quickly, Davenport couldn't even fathom. He led a squad into the nearest one whilst Second Squad split off to enter another hangar. The massive rolling doors at the front were closed and blocked whatever was inside from view. They had to find another way inside.

Sergeant Burke was way ahead of Davenport, and veered around the left hand side of the hangar, his AA-12 shotgun shouldered and ready to fire at anything that jumped out at them. After skirting round the side they found an entrance towards the rear of the mammoth hangar. Davenport radioed the other squad to tell them to enter the hangars via the rear entrance on the left-hand side, rather than going in through the front door, while Burke turned the handle and pushed the door open a fraction of an inch.

"It's unlocked," he said to Davenport, a little confused as to why.

"Of course it is," Davenport whispered softly, grinning slightly as he replied. "They don't need to lock it; we're the only idiots dumb enough to break into a Skynet base. Everyone with half a brain cell would avoid this place like the plague."

Davenport moved to the other side of the door while Burke and Private Sharpe held their rifles up at the ready. The other four men in their squad were on one knee on the ground, spread out in a semicircle around the others playing with the door. Two rifles and two M-240 machine guns aimed outwards to cover Davenport, Burke, and Sharpe.

Davenport motioned for Burke and Sharpe to be ready and pulled the door open quickly. Burke and Sharpe burst in with their weapons raised, followed by Davenport and then the others as they entered one by one.

The hangar was easily the size of a football field and at least twenty-five metres high. Davenport's eyes opened wide like saucers as he took in the interior of the hangar. His eye and ears, accustomed to darkness and silence, were now assaulted by the harsh white lights that illuminated the cavernous structure, and the constant whirring of factory machinery that combined with beeps and bangs and the constant crackle of electricity. Four large production lines ran half the length of the hangar; assembly lines and conveyor belts whirred as robotic arms tended to the machines being built, putting together Skynet's lethal metallic warriors. The nearest line, Davenport saw, was assembling a T-2; the towering fifteen foot megalith glistened as the neon lights hanging from the ceiling bathed it in an iridescent glow that made the machine seem even more monstrous somehow. Machines building other machines, without any human input; the more he thought about it, the more Davenport wondered the more stupid he realised it was. No wonder Skynet had taken over so easily; they'd put so much faith into these damned machines, gotten so fat and lazy whilst the machines had been entrusted at every corner of military and industry, that they'd practically handed the world to Skynet on a silver platter.

"Look at this, sir," Sharpe pointed at large stack of containers that dominated one corner of the hangar. Davenport approached as the other men spread out and searched the rest of the hangar. Sharpe pointed to a sealed metal container easily big enough to fit three or four men inside. What was more intriguing to him was what was stencilled on the side of the container.  _'BAE Land Systems/Kaliba Systems Model T-2 sensor packages and assorted components. Fragile: handle with care.'_

"'Fragile' my ass," Davenport muttered, thinking of the difficulty he'd had before trying to take out a T-2; without antitank weapons it was nigh on impossible. He looked on and saw the crates all contained different components for various machines. Some contained M-230 chain guns for the T-2s, while others contained various parts for the T-70 models. There were no HK parts; Davenport assumed that some of the hangars were dedicated to aircraft and others to earthbound machines. This wasn't what they'd expected at all; Skynet simply assembled the machines here; they must have built the components somewhere else and then shipped them here and other places to be put together. _Clever,_  Davenport thought. This way, if they destroyed a hangar, Skynet would simply send the components elsewhere to be assembled. It didn't matter if they took this place out, he realised. Skynet would simply build its armies in another location.

He and Sharpe both pulled out a square block of C4 plastic explosive from their webbing and stuck them onto a crate each; one on the bottom layer and another on the second layer of crates. The rows above would come crashing down when they detonated. Davenport watched as the others in his squad planted a block of C4 onto each production line as he left the crates and walked down the hangar.

"You see this?" Burke asked him as he cleared the end of an assembly unit and moved to the forward half of the hangar. In this half of the hangar stood rows upon rows of completed T-70s all motionless and stood to attention. The temptation to either run like mad or open up with everything he had was almost overwhelming. They were clearly offline, but that still didn't make them any less scary in his eyes. He walked up close to them and took a good look. They were different; their surfaces were smoother and less blocky, their heads were smaller and their faces were better protected; armour plating having been fitted over the exposed working parts. But the biggest difference he saw was in the weapons mounted to their right forearms; gone were the mini-guns, replaced with shortened .50 calibre machine guns and even Mk.47 grenade launchers: smaller, lighter, and more advanced versions of the Mk.19s mounted on top of their Strykers. Skynet was changing its own machines, refining them. How long would it be before it started to build those Terminators that Connor and Cameron had told him about?

"This isn't a work in progress," Davenport shook his head in disbelief. George had told them the base wasn't yet complete; its full potential not yet realised. Either George was lying, was dead wrong: there were scores of machines stood stock still in this hangar, and he could only guess that the other hangars were much the same. Another realisation dawned on Davenport as he took in the rows of machines the dominated the forward half of the hangar – there must have been fifty or sixty inside, easily. Assuming similar amounts in the other hangars; Skynet already had a small army of war machines at its disposal. And it wasn't building them in such numbers just to take out a few puny bunkers and outposts: Skynet was building an army to attack Cheyenne Mountain.

Perry needed to know about this, he thought. As the others swept quietly through the hangar and placed explosives, Davenport took out his radio to speak to Perry outside the base.

"Davenport to Perry, come in."

 _"...Is Perry, what's your status?"_  Davenport wondered why his transmission was so garbled, it had been clear a minute ago when he'd radioed the other squad.

"We've infiltrated the base and are planting C4 in the hangars, but it's worse than we thought; Skynet's got an army of machines in here, ready to go. How's it out there?"

 _"Holding our own... –r now. We've lost a Bradley and... Strykers. Haste would be appreciated..."_  The radio signal dissolved into static and white noise, so loud and piercing that Davenport grimaced in pain as his eardrums threatened to burst as he fumbled for the volume control on his radio.

 _"_ Perry, come in... Perry, respond!"

Davenport's only response on the radio was an ear splitting, high-pitched shriek of white noise that forced him to turn his radio volume right down. It still buzzed and crackled with static for several seconds until it settled down and was replaced by a voice that haunted Davenport to his very core as he listened. It wasn't Perry.

" _And on that glorious Day of Judgment our divine lord Skynet deemed mankind unworthy and released His wrath upon the world. The flames of judgment did consume those who were evil and unjust, so that He may reign supreme over all. And He declared upon that day that man and all his evils were to be cast asunder. And that those who were prideful, and refused to accept His divine judgment, shall be laid low and cast down into the flames of eternal damnation."_

* * *

"Who the hell is this?" Perry demanded from the seat of his Bradley. What was going on here? Why were the radios all screwy, and why couldn't he get through to Davenport anymore? And who the hell was spouting a load of apocalyptic religious crap over the radio, as if Skynet were some kind of god? "Identify yourself immediately!"

_"And the eternal flames of Judgment shall rain down from above upon those who are evil, and shall consume them in the hellfire of eternal torment!"_

Perry was about to dismiss the transmissions as the mad ravings of religious nuts who placed their misplaced faith into Skynet, when the air above exploded in an ear-splitting sonic boom and suddenly the last part of the message made perfect sense. 'Eternal flames of judgment shall  _rain down from above...'_

"Air attack!" Perry screamed into his radio. "All units fall back, now."

Unfortunately for Perry, he could not see the source of the sonic boom. He never saw the hypersonic Aurora bomber soaring thirty thousand feet above them at over five times the speed of sound. He never saw the bomb bay doors retracting underneath the belly of the aircraft. Never saw the missiles drop from the ejector racks in the weapons bay and descend down towards them. And he never saw the infrared laser beams pointed at the human convoy from a hidden spot out in the open rocky ground, guiding the Aurora's bombs down towards them.

Explosions erupted all over the battlefield; brilliant flashes lit up the night sky and rocked the ground beneath them. The Bradley rocked violently shook the crew inside, rattling Perry around like a pinball inside his seat. He cracked his head on a console and blood spattered onto a screen. He winced in pain and gritted his teeth as blood ran freely from a wide, deep gash on his forehead and obscured his vision.

"What the hell was that?" He asked rhetorically, wiping the blood from his eyes and looking out of the viewport to take in the scene before him. They'd held the T-2s at bay, tearing into them as they emerged from the base. The Abrams tanks that had been giving the defending T-2s the good news just moments ago were now gone, nothing but twisted, burnt out shards of scrap metal.

"Smart bombs," Corporal Fast replied from the gunner's turret, "two-thousand-pounders, probably."

 _Jesus,_  Perry thought. He'd known it must have been something big; if he'd not known any better he'd have sworn it was nuclear, the explosions had been that close and that powerful. Fuck it, this attack had gone to rat-shit in a matter of seconds; there was no way they could complete it now. They'd be lucky to get out of this one alive.

"I see one Stryker and a Humvee still rolling," Fast reported. "I think we're all that made it."

Perry's gut twisted into knots at the loss of so many more men. It made the losses in Fort Carson and Area 51 seem pale in comparison. Almost the whole force had been wiped out; two-thirds of their armoured vehicles, and he had no idea about...

"Davenport!" He gasped in realisation. His men were still in there. "Get us into that base," he ordered PFC Finch – the Bradley's driver.

"Sir? That's crazy; it's death row in there."

"How're we gonna know where they are?" Fast asked.

"Just look for where the metals are shooting," Perry replied. "Now  _drive!"_

The Bradley rolled forward towards the base and Perry got up out of his seat and into position behind the .50 calibre mounted machine gun on the turret, above and behind the chain gun. He charged the weapon and also waved his arms like a maniac at the remaining Stryker and Humvee, pointing at the base. The two vehicles followed suit, their crews catching on to what he wanted. He'd screwed up this mission already and lost a lot of men; if he could help it he'd make sure they didn't lose everyone. They surged onwards towards the base, gaining speed as they went.

* * *

"What the hell is that?" Burke asked, having heard the same broadcast on his own radio. "That's not Skynet! It can't be."

"Who the hell is this?" Davenport demanded. "Who's out there?"

"I don't like this," Sharpe muttered, his rifle pointed towards the T-70s, eyes darting across the hangar, watching for any movement, half-expecting the rows of machines to suddenly spring to life and attack them.

"Let's just blow it and get out," another soldier said, clearly afraid. Davenport couldn't blame him; that spouting religious rhetoric was the creepiest thing he'd ever heard in his life, but they still had a job to do.

Davenport heard the roaring sonic boom and the following explosion outside, so loud and so close that the ground trembled slightly beneath them. An air attack, he knew, and something extremely powerful.

"Perry, what was that?" Yet again there was no response. "Perry, respond!" Davenport urged nervously. The booming of tank guns had stopped, he noticed. They were on their own now; nobody was coming to back them up.

"Everyone bug out of the hangar," Davenport ordered, heading for the back door. "Move on to the next one. Second Squad, if you can hear me, move on to Hangar Four."

As the soldiers moved back towards the rear entrance, none of them saw the inert bodies of several T-70s start to move; their eyes glowed a bright red and they turned towards the retreating humans with the characteristic faint whine of pistons and servos as they aimed their weapons, causing the humans to turn back to face them, realising too late what was happening.

Gunfire chattered, muzzles flashed, and Private Sharpe exploded in a shower of blood and shredded tissue as heavy calibre rounds tore through his body. He fell to the floor in a gory heap as a T-70s emerged from the ranks of still machines and pointed their .50cal at them.

"Fuck! They're waking up!" Burke shouted as he pointed his AA-12 at the machine and loosed off a burst of armour piercing rounds, joined in by Davenport's M4A1 and another soldier's M240. The combined fire hammered into the machine and it knocked it over backwards. A second and third T-70 followed behind and spread out, opening fire on Davenport's squad. Without needing to be told, squad split up and spread themselves out and returned fire. Another man fell to the .50cals before the concentrated fire of the remaining weapons brought them both down; their armoured hides withstood the brunt of their fire before the Frag-12 and 7.62mm machine gun rounds finally pierced through to their critical systems and disabled them.

"They're everywhere!" Someone else shouted as they all ran for cover and returned fire on the increasing numbers of machines that reactivated and moved against them.

"It's a trap!"

"We're fucked!"

Machine guns and rifles chattered as they fired back, but the machines were reactivating and approaching from all angles. Davenport cursed as he fired a sustained burst from his rifle into the face of another machine; it took half the magazine before it finally succumbed and dropped to the floor with a clatter that was drowned out by the bursts of weapons fire from both sides. Davenport ran back behind the corner of part of one of the assembly lines and fired into the approaching machines, covering the others as they pepper-potted backwards, firing and manoeuvring; distracting the machines from those who were retreating, and then falling back once they'd gotten into cover and returned fire. Their cover was sparse, though, and the machines were advancing. Burke waited until one was right on top of him, then rolled out and tripped the machine over, sending the awkward-looking robot crashing to the ground. Burke was on it in an instant and fired half a dozen rounds into its face, putting it down for good.

"We're trapped in here!" Burke shouted as he gave another machine the good news with his AA-12, his armour piercing ammunition exploded against its steel hides and tore into its inner workings, also shattering the machine's shoulder joint connecting the gun-arm to its body. More and more machines were reactivating, though, and they were trapped in an open hangar with no cover, seconds away from being slaughtered with .50 cal rounds. He was only glad that the tin cans hadn't yet opened up with their grenades.

 _Grenades,_  he thought, remembering the launcher under his rifle barrel. He turned to the stacked pile of crates and triggered the weapon, aiming for the higher layers of containers. The round blew through the crate it struck with a flash and a loud bang, and the whole pile came crashing down and sprawled haphazardly throughout the rear end of the hangar, providing a number of large boxes filled with bulletproof machine components to hide behind.

"Get behind the crates!" He roared, firing the last of his magazine to distract a machine from the men who ran backwards to the cover he'd just created. Burke and another soldier named O'Malley grunted with exertion and pushed more of the heavy crates together.

Six men made it behind the impromptu fortifications and started to return fire, pouring rounds into the machines that just kept coming. Davenport fired off another grenade and shattered the upper half of another T-70 as two of his men – O'Malley and Anders – poured sustained fire from their machine guns into the machines' ranks, shooting at anything that moved that wasn't wholly organic. Burke threw a hand grenade into the row of robots that stood still, the explosion knocked several of them off their feet and to the floor. He wasn't taking any chances with those that had yet to activate.

"Grenade launchers!" Davenport yelled out; his men's response was three 40mm grenades, including his own, fired a volley into the machines and created spectacular blasts and showers of sparks that devastated their targets, tearing machine limbs from bodies, cracking armour and twisting weapons out of shape, shattering sensor nodes and tearing conveyor belts in half, bringing production on one of the lines to a grinding halt. Their action bought a few precious seconds of leeway, allowing them to fire aimed bursts rather than hosing down anything in the hangar that moved.

Davenport pulled out the detonator for the C4 charges, ready to blow it all now lest they all be killed before they had a chance to blow the factory. His finger hovered over the switch, ready to meet his maker.

The left-hand wall of the hangar suddenly exploded inwards with a horrific  _screech_  of rending steel and a fountain of erupting sparks showered over the interior of the hangar as electrical conduits were severed, shattering work lights hanging from the ceiling, adding to the rain of debris all over and plunging the battle into darkness, illuminated by only by muzzle flashes from human and machine weapons, and the handful of roiling fires that licked across production lines through the hangar.

Metal squealed and twisted in protest and a support strut snapped like a toothpick as a Bradley fighting vehicle burst through the wall, the chain gun turned towards the machines and loosed an almighty burst of heavy antitank rounds that shattered machine torsos and exploded all around the inside of the hangar. Davenport could barely believe his eyes as he saw Perry on top, firing the .50 cal into the machines, hammering them back with near impunity. Several T-70s fired their weapons into the Bradley, but the .50BMG rounds and 40mm grenades bounced off the heavily armoured fighting vehicle like raindrops.

"Get in, for fuck's sake!" Perry turned his head back at Davenport, not ceasing fire for an instant.

Davenport breathed a massive, heartfelt sigh of relief and placed the detonator back into his pocket as he ushered his men into the back of the Bradley, the rear hatch open and waiting for them. He'd written himself off moments ago, the sensation that he and his men were actually going to live through this was almost overwhelming. He couldn't believe Perry had actually come for them; the last time they'd been stuck like this, he'd left them to it at the first sign of a T-2. As the last to enter, he dived down onto a seat, grunting as his ribs caught onto the hard corner of a seat. He ignored it as best he could and reached up to slap the button to close the hatch. The hatch ascended upwards, agonisingly slowly, until it finally sealed shut over the entrance with a satisfying  _click_  as the locks engaged. As soon as they did Davenport shouted up to Perry.

"We're in, go!"

Perry abandoned the gun and dropped back down into the rear of the vehicle as the Bradley backed out of the hangar and turned away from the building in a wide arc, speeding out away from the building, chain gun still firing in long bursts as they made their way out of the base. More than one T-70 tried to block their path but were simply run down and crushed like bugs beneath the twenty-seven tonnes of armour. The vehicle rocked and jerked as errant 30mm rounds from T-2s struck the thick armoured hide, the reactive armour exploded outwards and deflected most of the force of the rounds but the vehicle was severely damaged. One round punched through and a loud  _bang_  almost brought the Bradley to a standstill, much to the horror of the men inside. Thick black smoke poured out of the damaged engine and into the air as the battered Bradley led what was left of their convoy home.

Davenport breathed in deeply as they punched through the perimeter wire and the firing died down, eventually fading away as the Bradley and its accompanying vehicles shot down the last of their pursuers and they rolled slowly back towards Cheyenne Mountain. The stale, metallic air inside the Bradley was one of the sweetest things he'd ever tasted in his life. He pulled out the C4 detonator once more and pressed the switch. They were too far from the base to be able to hear the explosion, but Davenport closed his eyes and grinned slightly as he tried to imagine the roiling fireballs that would erupt from the hangars they'd wired up. Then the image of Sharpe's exploding body dominated his mind's eye and he couldn't bring himself to smile anymore.

* * *

Five men sat around the square oak table in the briefing room; the highest ranking resistance members in Fort Carson were all present and the tension of the situation was clear to see. Colonel Marcus Perry, Lieutenant Joshua Davenport, Derek "Baum" Reese, former agent James Ellison, and Charley Dixon glanced at each other with hollow gazes and bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep as they mulled over the disastrous turn of events. They all looked as if they'd aged considerably over the last twenty-four hours. Sprawled across the table were documents and images that weighed heavily on their souls.

Thirty-three men had died during the attack; none of the tank crews had survived; nor had any of the men whom Davenport had assigned to guard their entrance in the perimeter fence; they'd simply vanished. Second Squad, led by Lieutenant Grant, had fared similarly; four men had survived, minus their commander who'd perished quite literally at the hands of a T-70 that, as his men described it, had punched a hole through his chest. By some small miracle, the mortar crews had survived; but isolated by the radio jamming that had been thrown up, had been in the dark as to what had been going on, and kept on firing until the battered and limping convoy had picked them up. All four Abrams tanks, one of their Bradleys, a Stryker and a Humvee had been destroyed by the machines; their entire armoured force now consisted of a battered Bradley and a handful of Strykers which weren't much good for anything except bus rides.

"Looking at this," Ellison said, holding up a satellite photo taken of Schriever air base for emphasis. "The attack wasn't a total loss." He felt dirty and wrong for saying it that way; there'd be thirty-three more names read out at his sermon on Sunday. But as he'd taken up the role of Cheyenne Mountain's intelligence officer, he had to show the facts.

"How was it anything  _but_  a total loss?" Perry asked irritably, shaking his head in dismay. The sudden loss of so many men was weighing down on him more than anyone; he'd sent Davenport and his men into the base, it was solely on his shoulders that the responsibility laid. "This mission was fucked from start to finish."

"Judging from these images, you managed to destroy three out of seven hangars; we've slowed them down, at least." Ellison replied.

"For a few weeks, at most," Derek chipped in coldly. "Give it a month and they'll be up and running again." He'd seen it all before in the future; they'd take out one factory or airfield and before the explosions had even died down, Skynet had construction machines already starting to work on a new one.

"It's not just the guys we lost," Davenport said. "Who the hell was out there, preaching that apocalyptic crap, moments before our tanks got bombed?"

"'And that those who were prideful, and refused to accept His divine judgment, shall be laid low and cast down into the flames of eternal damnation.'" Perry quoted part of the speech that he'd heard over the airwaves, it had haunted him since he'd first heard it. "What the hell does that mean? That George guy in the infirmary's got a lot to answer for," he growled.

"He's in a coma!" Charley insisted. "You're not going anywhere near him until he wakes up."

"Then wake him up," Perry snapped. Derek found himself in the unusual position of agreeing with the officer; he had questions to ask him, especially now. He had serious doubts over the injured man's loyalties; he could only hope that his growing suspicions were wrong, and there was some other explanation for it and they were just the victims of bad intelligence. He was going to keep an eye on George.

"I can't just wake him up," Charley shot back. "He's a person, not a light switch; I can't just turn him back on with a click of my finger."

"You'd better find a way," Perry said, pointing to more photos that had been taken of suspected and confirmed factories and Skynet bases throughout Colorado. They all showed faint images of machines emerging from cover and rolling en masse towards resistance tunnels and bunkers they'd set up over the last few months. "Because we went into that base on his intel; he told us it was a work in progress, not a fortress. I want to know what he knows, so you let me know, the  _second_  he wakes up, Dixon."

Charley simply nodded in agreement, unhappy about how one of his patients was being treated, but at the same time seeing that they knew nothing about this George character. They had to tread carefully.

"So what it's boiling down to," Davenport said with uncharacteristic pessimism, "is that we've just lost a lot of good men, our biggest sticks, and we've got a load of freaks running around out there that see Skynet as a god, probably planning to put a spanner in our works. Any more good news?"

"The machines in Fort Collins, Pueblo County, and Denver have started to mobilize en masse from suspected factories we've not been able to deal with," Ellison replied. "We've ordered units in those areas to fall back to Cheyenne Mountain."

"We're going to need them," said Perry, sternly. "Because when the machines are finished with the little fish they're coming after us." He'd spoken to Davenport before this meeting and the lieutenant had made it pretty clear what his opinions were when he'd seen the inside of the hangar. Skynet was building an army, purely for their benefit. Davenport hadn't been his usual, cheery self since the attack. Perry hoped sincerely that it was only a passing thing and he'd recover. Davenport's positive demeanour was a definite morale boost for his men, and not many people had much to smile about since Judgment Day. He'd never say it but it was refreshing to see someone with a sense of humour still.

The solid wooden door that separated their meeting from the rest of the mountain flew open and slammed against the wall with a loud crack, denting the whitewashed plaster and causing all the room's occupants to jump in their seats with shock.

"What is it?" Perry asked, not looking up to the soldier who'd just entered and not even bothering to reprimand him for barging in. It wasn't like it really mattered, he thought.

"Sir, I've just come from the command centre, and we've,"

"Spit it out," Derek said, having no time for chitchat. He hated it when people beat around the bush; people that did that often got themselves or others killed in the future.

"We lost the satellites, sir," the soldier continued meekly. "We can't control them anymore; Skynet's taken them back."

Everyone inside the room shared a silent, internal groan at yet more bad news. They'd lost a lot of good men – a quarter of their trained military personnel – their most powerful assets, and Skynet was already mobilising its forces against their outlying bunkers and tunnels. And now without the satellites they were isolated, able to safely talk to no one. In that moment it became clear to all of them that the 4th Infantry resistance of Cheyenne Mountain would soon have to face the might of Skynet's machine armies, completely and utterly alone.


	14. We Don't Want Any Trouble

Two figures infiltrated the outskirts of the dead city from the surrounding desert. Both were slight, slender females: one a green-eyed, wary blonde who seemed uncomfortable being out in the open; the other a brunette with large chocolate orbs, seemingly devoid of feeling and betraying nothing of the constant torment she felt at being separated from her lost love.

Both were armed, though to anyone watching the duo it was clear that only the brunette was used to handling firearms; she held her weapon tightly in both hands, finger poised over the trigger and ready to fire at a moment's notice. Normal military safety protocols were redundant in her case, as she was incapable of accidentally firing her rifle. In contrast, her blonde companion's own weapon was slung over her shoulder, hanging off her back and tapping gently on her buttocks with each stride she took as they made their way through the ghostly silent ruins and towards the city centre.

The pair had marched through the arid, dusty, featureless desert landscape for seemingly endless days and dark, bitterly cold nights. They marched silently through the war-torn suburban outskirts, shown no mercy in the machines' unstoppable path of destruction. Hundreds of bloodied, bullet riddled corpses lined the roads for block after block throughout the residential areas of Carson City; people who'd tried to run from their homes had been coldly gunned down by overwhelming and merciless firepower as they fled.

Courtney screwed up her face in disgust at the vile stench and the grotesque sight of rancid, grey and mottled piles of flesh that had once been human beings. She kept her eyes forward and instinctively darting around, searching for any signs of movement. She kept her eyes away from them as much as possible; looking only as much as she needed to avoid tripping over them – they were that many – but she couldn't block out the smell of rotting flesh or the sound of flies buzzing as they happily feasted on the putrid remains of Skynet's many victims.

The sight and smell of the dead didn't bother Cameron in the slightest; they were simply obstacles to be avoided – little more than trip hazards. They bothered Courtney greatly, however, and Cameron was concerned for Courtney's emotional and mental state at being exposed to so many corpses. They'd remind her of her father. Courtney had said very little during their long trek from Cactus Springs; she'd been completely silent for the first five days – only grunting in compliance when Cameron told her where to go or what to do. She'd been grieving. John had gone through the same when he'd lost Sarah, so Cameron had some experience to relate to.

"Are you okay?" Cameron asked, both out of concern for her companion's wellbeing, as well as to make conversation and distract Courtney from the bodies that were making her uncomfortable.

"I've... I've never seen anything like this before," Courtney said quietly. The whole place looked like a mass grave to her. It wasn't right; innocent people slaughtered in their hundreds and just left out in the open. It reminded her of leaving her dad behind and not burying him, or doing something at least, though she'd accepted now that Cameron was right and they'd have died there if they'd tried. And she knew her dad wouldn't want that for her. It still filled her with guilt, though.

"I have," Cameron replied. She didn't say that this was a common sight in the future; bleached skulls littering the open ground and piles of bones scattered across the concrete jungles of Los Angeles in 2027. It would be commonplace in 2011, too; in every village, town, and city not destroyed in the nuclear fires of Judgment Day. They'd all eventually fall to the machines.

"You sure this is the right place?" Courtney asked doubtfully, taking in the obliterated ruins before her. She'd never seen such destruction before; her own township having fallen victim to nerve gas attacks before the machines had moved in and wiped out the survivors. Much of Cactus Springs was still intact, and the majority of it – of no use to Skynet - would be left to eventually rot away and crumble into dust.

"This is it," Cameron replied. Carson City, where the message said John was. Her eyes scanned over the ruined city as well, searching for movement – either human or machine; anything to give a clue as to where John might be.

"There's not much here," Courtney said, a little disappointed. "From what you told me about John, I thought there'd be soldiers here, or... _something,_  anyway."

They marched on towards the centre of the city, following the signposts that were actually in one piece and still legible. As the residential area thinned out and gave way to the city centre, the destruction became more absolute.

The centre of Carson City was nothing less than an obliterated, bombed-out wasteland; worse than Baghdad during the height of the Iraq War, worse than war-torn Bosnia during the 1990s, and worse even than France during the Allies' invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe in 1944. Gone was the thriving urban city centre that had once been Nevada's capital city, replaced by a devastated landscape of rubble and ruin.

In the centre of the city, not a single structure stood unscathed. Office buildings stood scorched and punctured by missiles, bombs, and artillery fire; several wobbled slightly in the wind and teetered, threatening to topple over completely. Retail and department stores had been shattered in explosions of glass, concrete, and metal; their roofs and walls caved in from the overwhelming explosive force of hundreds of bombs dropped from on high, sweeping away the city in a rain of fire and brimstone that had consumed all and spared none.

Cameron scanned the area and saw that the residents of Carson City had not gone down without a fight. Tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and Skynet machines laid in pieces and littered the city centre. The blasted wrecks of T-70s lay mere feet from a hastily erected barricade, telling of a last stand by the human defenders who lay on the other side of the sandbags. The entire scene told of a fierce battle; one that did not go well for the humans defending the city. Cameron briefly scanned over each and every corpse in sight, needing to make sure none were John. Whatever had happened here had happened a long time before John may or may not have arrived upon Carson City, she knew; long before her and John had been separated at Las Vegas. There was nobody left; the battle had been fought weeks, if not months, ago.

The only signs of life they could see were the carrion birds that picked the last strips of flesh off of the dead. They'd be bleached skulls and bones soon enough.

"I don't know about you," Courtney said, picking her way through the rubble and trying to avoid the dead bodies that were scattered around as she made her way to what had once been a small convenience store. The glass windows had been shattered and the walls were riddled with gunfire, but it was one of the few buildings around that looked structurally sound. "But I kinda hope John's  _not_  here."

Cameron stared at her with narrowed eyes and found her fist clenching slightly at Courtney's words; why wouldn't she want John to be here? They'd crossed over two hundred miles of desert to find John; their sole purpose was to find him, she wouldn't ever give up until she found him. He was everything to her; she couldn't live without John and wouldn't rest until she could make him safe and be with him again. Why would Courtney not want him to be here?

"I'm just saying," Courtney caught Cameron's glare and hastily explained. "This place is a wreck; I can't see how anyone could live here. The radio broadcast  _was_  a recording; so if John was here when  _this_ happened," she swept her hand out at the obliterated landscape all around them. "I can't see how he'd have survived."

"John wasn't here when this happened," Cameron said. "This happened months ago." She guessed two to three months. Her face fell slightly as she spoke; exactly three months ago they'd celebrated her built day together. It had been one of the first times she could have described herself as happy. She'd spent the day with John; no fighting, no war, no mission; just them together. Now it was all gone. She wanted him back.

Courtney watched the hint of sadness creep into Cameron's face. First of all, she'd never been able to read Cameron's expressions; her face was so blank. She'd commented once during their trek that Cameron would make a good poker player. But after walking alongside her constantly for days and days, spending every waking moment together, she'd started to see slight hints of something; her face conveyed almost nothing but it was her eyes that gave away the slightest spark of sadness.

"I'm sure he's fine," Courtney smiled and tried to sound positive, hoping to cheer Cameron up. "We should check in here," she pointed to the store she'd approached. "We're out of food."

"We find John first," Cameron said forcefully. She didn't want to waste time with food when John could be anywhere in the city.

"We've not eaten properly in two days, almost," Courtney replied. "And even if we find him right now we'll need food to get to wherever we're going. Not like we're gonna stay here, are we?" She hoped not.

"No," Cameron agreed. She had a point; John would need food, as would Courtney. It was a long journey from Carson City to Cheyenne Mountain; even if they managed to find an intact vehicle somewhere along the way, it would take days to get back to Colorado, to the safety of Cheyenne Mountain.

Cameron nodded once in agreement with Courtney and followed her lead. She watched Courtney pick her way through the piles of debris and the cracked, broken ground with surprising agility. She'd also been surprised during their long trek from Cactus Springs to Carson City that Courtney had kept up almost the whole time; only stopping when her body needed sleep or she needed to relieve herself. She'd not once complained during their journey, to Cameron's surprise. She'd hardly said a word for five and a half days, grieving over her father. She'd just walked where Cameron did, her eyes wary and alert despite her grief as they'd trekked in almost complete silence. It had taken five days for Courtney to say even a single word.

Cameron followed her into the store and kept her rifle pointed forward, ready to deal with any threats as they walked the length of the store. Whilst she kept her eyes peeled with the rifle Courtney opened up her pack and stuffed various tins of food inside. Their supplies had run low, despite Cameron eating like an anorexic half the time and sharing what little food she did eat; Courtney didn't know how her stoic companion managed to keep on going. She never seemed tired and was never bothered about eating. She drank plenty of water, though. Once on their journey, Courtney had watched Cameron guzzle down a bottle of water faster than her Dad's Army buddies had downed pitchers of beer.

"Hey, let's check down here," Courtney pointed down one promising looking aisle. Cameron looked at the aisle in question and saw it was lined with chocolate bars and packets of sugar coated sweets and candy.

"That's the confectionary aisle," Cameron said doubtfully. She didn't see anything there that would point them towards John.

"But... how can we be sure unless we investigate?" Courtney looked back at her, a crooked grin and a look of mock pleading on her face. Cameron suddenly caught on to what she meant; she'd observed Courtney's sweet tooth over the last fortnight; she didn't eat much but she'd displayed a large preference for chocolate. John had once told her all girls do. She wasn't like other girls, she'd replied, to which John smiled and had answered 'I know.' She didn't understand why, but he loved her because she was different; not like people.

"You should eat better," Cameron replied nodding her assent to Courtney before, pretending to sigh and turning away to search the rest of the store. She'd heard that chocolate was comfort food, and she knew from experience, when John lost Sarah, that after losing her dad Courtney would need comfort. Courtney's face lit up in glee as she stuffed chocolate bars and candy into her pack, filling it to the brim. She tore open the wrapping on a bar of dark chocolate, munching and humming cheerfully as she shovelled more sugar-rich snacks into her pack and pockets, offering Cameron a bag of Skittles. Cameron shook her head no and left her to it, knowing Courtney wouldn't go far. She stalked her way down the empty store to search for any clues. She knew what foods John liked, and if he was around then there'd be gaps in the shelves.

There were several gaps on the shelves; someone had been inside and taken food after the battle outside. There were no gaps in the crunchy Cheetos or pancake mixes, however, and Cameron hadn't seen anything to suggest John had been here. Courtney's idea was logical; if John was in Carson City, as the radio broadcast had said, then he'd need to eat something, and field rations from any unit he'd joined with – possibly survivors from the battle that had raged outside and destroyed the city – wouldn't last long and they'd have to scavenge for more supplies.

 _"CAMERON!"_  She took off running as soon as she heard Courtney's voice – somewhere between a scream and a shriek – coming from the other end of the store. She tore through the aisles, her gun raised and ready to fire as she prepared to find Courtney at the mercy of a machine.

Instead she saw Courtney stood statue-still, hands over her mouth and shaking all over in shock and fear, in front of the body of a thin, brown haired man in dirty, torn shirt and ragged, stained trousers. He'd been nailed to the wall by his hands and his throat cut. Blood ran down his shirt and trousers and pooled down at his feet in a large crimson puddle. He was slumped forwards, the dead weight of his body dragging him towards the floor, but held up be the nails penetrating from his hands and buried into the wall. His face – pale and clammy – was contorted in an agonised, fearful grimace that had permanently set with rigor mortis. Cameron could tell from the bruises on his face and neck that he'd been beaten severely before he'd been killed. She regarded the body with curiosity, rather than Courtney's abject fear and disgust.

"Machines did this?" She asked, terrified of the answer. The image of her dad's body crept into her mind and she wanted to run away and curl up into a ball and cry, but she was rooted to the spot.

"Machines don't torture people," Cameron lied. The machines of this timeline didn't torture people, yet. Machines weren't deliberately cruel; they did torture people for information – something she herself was guilty of, once. But Skynet had not taught them how to inflict pain to extract information; it had been the human traitors – Greys – who'd allied with Skynet and taught the machines how to torture so effectively. In terms of cruelty; Skynet didn't hold a candle to mankind.

She looked up above the body at the crudely constructed, handwritten sign that read a single word: 'Thief'. "He stole food. He was punished for it." It happened a lot in the future. Future John punished criminals severely. Traitors, rapists, and murderers were routinely executed; thieves were usually exiled from the tunnels and banished to the surface. She understood why he did it; to keep order in the Resistance and to deter anyone from acting in any way that could harm the war effort. Other groups, unaffiliated with the Resistance, often effected far worse punishments.

The thought that people had done this rather than machines didn't make Courtney feel any better in the slightest; she'd always thought people were basically good, that they'd help each other. The machines were killing people, so why would they do the machines' jobs for them and kill each other over scraps of food? There was plenty in the store; why couldn't people just share? She knew she was naive – she'd been raised by her dad in a tiny little town where everyone knew each other. After the bombs had gone off elsewhere, people in Cactus Springs had organised and helped each other out. Her dad had kept the store open and given away food for free – rationing it so everyone got their fair share. It seemed like mob rule, here; whoever had done that were a bunch of animals. She had a vision of her and Cameron being nailed to the wall and their own throats cut, and it made her want to run for her life as fast as her legs could take her.

"We have to go," Cameron insisted. Whoever had killed the man in front of them was no threat to her, but they could still harm Courtney, and they could impede her search for John.

"No arguments from me," Courtney replied quietly, slinging her pack over her back – over the carbine – and walking quickly behind Cameron as the pair of them hastily marched down the main aisle of the store and out of the exit. Cameron led the way, her SCAR rifle aimed forward as she blazed a trail through the piles of broken concrete and glass and metal, her eyes continuously scanning for any threats or any clues as to where John was.

They quickly put distance between themselves and the store; to both their relief. Cameron, because she could search elsewhere; and Courtney, because seeing the beaten and murdered man had scared her more than anything she'd ever seen before.

They marched across the cracked, potholed street and past more stores and offices, each looking almost the same as the last and seeming to stretch on forever. Each held the promise of revealing something to them regarding John's location, but each block, each building, and each street, yielded nothing but more bodies and a sense of deep dissatisfaction and anxiety in Cameron. She'd search forever to find John, but she didn't want it to take that long. She wanted to find him  _now._

Something clattered off to the left and Cameron instantly snapped her head and rifle towards the sound. In the same instant, Courtney also hit the ground and turned towards the source of the noise, instinctively diving behind the cover of half a Buick Century whilst Cameron stood her ground.

A lone man wandered through piles of crushed and shattered concrete, ambling his way along; his movements sluggish and shambolic. His clothes were just as torn and ragged as the man in the store, his face covered in cuts and his hair dirty and unkempt. He had several weeks' hair growth on his staunch, hollow face, and he looked emaciated. Cameron took aim and kept her finger on the trigger in case he was a threat. The man spotted them and shambled along towards them, muttering to himself as he approached.

"Where's John?" Cameron asked.

"Get out. Leave this place," the stranger said, half delirious from exhaustion, hunger, and fatigue. He tried to make it all the way to Cameron but instead collapsed against the remains of a wall and slumped down to the ground. Courtney got up from behind the wrecked car and approached alongside Cameron.

"Who are you?" Courtney asked.

"Where's John?" Cameron repeated, nudging the man with her foot to rouse him as he closed his eyes and his head slumped, chin resting on his chest. He looked to Cameron like he was in shock; she needed to find out if he knew anything about John, before he became catatonic.

"Easy, Cameron," Courtney pushed in front of her and knelt down beside the man. She took her water bottle and unscrewed the cap, lifting the bottleneck to his lips. "It's just water," she said, tilting it slightly so the clear liquid ran into his parched mouth. He gulped loudly and greedily, as if he'd not drank in days, then pushed the bottle away rested his head back against the wall, rambling to himself once again. He tilted his head away from Courtney; his hair fell aside to reveal one of his ears had been cut off, leaving a bloodied, scabby stump.

"He's been tortured," she looked back at Cameron as she screwed the cap back on her bottle and shoved it into her pack once more. "Probably the same guys from the store." She felt a chill rush down her spine at the thought they weren't alone out here, and she couldn't help but look around, half expecting to be attacked at any moment.

Cameron knelt down beside Courtney and placed the palm of her hand over his neck and collar, scanning him briefly. He was in shock, as she thought. His heart rate was rapid and irregular, he was breathing shallowly and his pupils were dilated. Looking at his crimson-stained clothes, she could see he'd lost a lot of blood, and his body showed signs of hypothermia – he'd likely been unable to find shelter or warmer clothes in the frigid air that grew harsher at night - which only added to his delirium. If they were in Cheyenne Mountain or another well equipped base with a sickbay and medical staff, he might survive. In what remained of Carson City, he had no chance.

"He's dying," Cameron said, and then turned her attention back to the man. "Tell us where John Connor is," Cameron urged, not at all fazed by the stranger's suffering.

"No, no, no! John Connor... run, stay away."

Cameron, in a first ever for a machine, was losing patience. This man knew who John Connor was; he'd know  _where_  John was. She pulled him upright to his feet, holding him up by his shirt bunched up in one fist, while she drew back her other arm and slapped him in the face, hoping to bring him to his senses.

"Cameron!" Courtney gasped in shock.  _"What're you doing?"_

"He knows where John is."

"But you can't  _beat_  him. Look at what he's been through."

"Don't go with Connor," he finally breathed out with a supreme force of will. "Get out, go!"

Shots erupted out of nowhere and the top of the wall behind them exploded, showering Cameron and Courtney in brick dust. Courtney squealed in fear and ducked down while Cameron instantly brought her rifle to bear, scanning for who'd fired the shots.

"Drop your weapons,  _now!"_  Cameron snapped her attention to her half-right and pointed her rifle at the voice; fifty yards away stood a man half-crouched behind an upturned car, M4 carbine pointed straight at her.

"You're surrounded; drop 'em!" Another voice yelled from her left. In a flash, Cameron let go of the SCAR barrel stock with her left hand and whipped out her pistol, pointing it at the second man. Courtney was on her knees on the ground, fumbling to get her pack off and reach her own weapon. Her hands trembled and shook with fear as she cursed and tried to untangle the carbine's strap from those of her pack, twisting it into even worse knots than before.

Cameron scanned the area and saw five armed men pointing weapons at her and Courtney. All of the men were behind cover and all had clear lines of sight on them. One wielded an M-249 SAW, whilst the others brandished the more common M4A1 carbines; one of which had a grenade launcher fitted under the barrel. That was a serious threat to her; she couldn't survive even a single hit to the chest or head, and even if the 40mm explosive struck her in the legs or the stomach she'd be blown in half. She couldn't take them all at once, and even if she neutralised the grenade launcher first the others could still kill Courtney.

"Don't move," Cameron quietly said to Courtney, who'd just gotten her rifle strap untangled from her pack. "They'll shoot if you move." Courtney looked out at the weapons pointed at them and dropped her gun; she didn't know how to use the thing properly, anyway. She hoped Cameron knew what she was doing; five against two wasn't good odds, even if Cameron had two guns pointed at them. Cameron was good, but she was still human, Courtney thought. Only one of the machines would be able to take on five men and walk away.

"Drop it or we  _will_ fire!"

"We don't want any trouble," Courtney called out nervously. She slowly stood up, keeping her hands in the air even as Cameron had her weapons trained on two of the men. "We'll just go." These men weren't soldiers, she noticed. Even though her dad had left the Army when she was a baby, he'd still carried himself like one all the time she was growing up. She remembered several of his old Army buddies visiting her dad regularly during her childhood; they'd still been in the Army and she'd learned to recognise how soldiers were. These guys weren't soldiers; she knew that much.

Cameron had reached the same conclusion - albeit from different criteria. They didn't look or act like soldiers; they didn't move as a unit as they approached. They weren't dressed in uniform, no cap badge and no insignia. They weren't soldiers but they were clearly a form of militia, Cameron thought. Another thought crossed her mind, overtaking her mental threat assessment as a priority: Perhaps they knew John.

"We're looking for John Connor," Cameron called out.

"You've come to the right place, then," one of them shouted back as the five of them strolled towards them, weapons still raised. The leader of the group – a bearded black man wearing a baseball cap and holding the rifle with the grenade launcher - lowered his weapon and marched up closer to them. "Name's Bates; and you are?"

"Cameron," she curtly replied, still keeping her weapon pointed at him. "She's Courtney. We're looking for John." Bates looked the pair up and down as if inspecting them, and smiled, sending a shiver up Courtney's spine. She didn't like the way he leered at them, not one bit. She shrank away as he stood only a few feet away, unconsciously moving behind Cameron for protection.

"Cameron... Connor will be happy to see you," Bates grinned once more. "Come with us."

"Where is he?" Cameron lowered her weapon and walked towards him, feeling a sense of relief take over as she found herself closer to finding John. She'd find him soon and they could be together and go back to Cheyenne Mountain where she could keep him safe once more.

"I don't like this," Courtney whispered. "Something's not right." She wanted to get away from these guys; every instinct in her body told her to run. This wasn't what she'd expected. Cameron said John was a general; she'd imagined big army camp with tanks and helicopters, and actual soldiers. Not five dirty-looking guys with guns, who stared at them like they were pieces of meat. She'd had a teacher at school that looked at her like that once; it had scared her then and it did now.

"Everything's fine," Cameron replied, preoccupied with the prospect of seeing John again. All her cognitive and mental functions were running faster in anticipation of seeing him again; she was excited. "Where's John?" She asked Bates.

"We'll take you to him; it's a little while from here." Bates nodded to his men and they lowered their guns. "You know this guy?" He gestured down towards the unconscious stranger on the ground.

"No," Cameron replied simply.

Bates pointed his rifle at the man's head and fired twice, the rounds punched through his skull and exploded out the other side in a splatter of blood, bone, and brain matter. He slumped over to one side and lay unmoving as blood pooled out the gaping hole in the side of his head, split open like a cantaloupe.

"What the hell?" Courtney cried out in shock, jumping in surprise at the rifle's barking report.

"He stole food from us," Bates shrugged. "Anyone who steals from the Resistance is a traitor." Courtney's mind went to her pack in front of her and prayed they didn't look inside it; she didn't want to end up being shot or tortured. There was no doubt in her mind that these were the same guys who nailed the guy in the store to the wall and slit his throat, though she didn't dare mention it. If John Connor was in charge, and he was as good a man as Cameron said, then why was he allowing this?

"Come on," Bates growled, putting one of his men on point as they started off through the demolished streets once more. Cameron fell into line behind Bates, and Courtney reluctantly followed suit; her gut told her this was all wrong, but she figured she was safer if she stuck with Cameron.

"Where're we going?" she asked as they started marching at a fast pace.

"We've got a couple of cars a mile or so from here, we'll drive to base from here; Connor will want to see you."

"Did Connor tell you to kill innocent people, too?" Courtney asked, looking back at the body of the man they'd shot. He'd warned them to stay away from John Connor. Why? And why wasn't Cameron asking these questions? She was pretty switched on.

"He wasn't innocent," Bates shot back. "He stole from us; we had to punish him."

"Connor says we can't tolerate anyone who harms the Resistance; we gotta make an example," one of the men behind Courtney said as casually as if they were talking about a fine for littering.

Cameron looked back at the dead body one last time and suddenly her excitement and sense of relief disappeared: she wanted more than anything to find John but she also didn't want him to become like his future self, yet that was what seemed to be happening. Did losing her make John change? If John thought she was dead then he could have stopped caring about anything else. She wanted to see him more than ever, to preserve the way John was; she loved her John, not Future John. Would she love him still if he became as cold and unfeeling as his future self, if he wasn't  _her John?_  She didn't know.


	15. Who Are You?

**Cook Inlet, near Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska**

Alaska: once a pristine, snow-white, untouched wilderness, was now marred with permanent dull greyness; the sun largely blotted out by the millions of tons of dust in the upper atmosphere, casting a lifeless dark grey hue in the sky, reminiscent of storm clouds. Even the snow on the ground seemed grey, tainted by Skynet's nuclear apocalypse.

Much of the area had been incinerated on Judgment Day in the atomic blasts; the city of Anchorage and the two nearby military installations – Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson – had been high on Skynet's target list. Little remained of either the city or the Army and Air Force bases; reduced to smoking piles of charred, blacked rubble, twisted metal and melted glass, ruined hangars and runways, broken buildings and debris everywhere.

There were survivors, however. Several hundred men and women had survived – a fraction of the bases' twelve-thousand strong combined military population of soldiers and airmen, and the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand civilians living in Anchorage. After the bombs had fallen the surviving soldiers and airmen had thought nothing of themselves and worked to assist the survivors in the nearby city, providing food, medical attention, and limited shelter in the few structures deemed safe enough for habitation.

The surviving population of Elmendorf had increased massively in recent days with the arrival of three vessels; the aircraft carriers USS _Nimitz,_  the  _George HW Bush,_ and the Seawolf-class submarine, the  _Jimmy Carter._ The three ships had arrived to take on food, fuel, and ammunition supplies, and to transport the surviving soldiers and civilians out of Anchorage. The bitterly cold climate of Alaska had been made all the worse by the dropping winter temperatures, exacerbated still by the nuclear debris blotting out the sun and dropping the winter temperature well below normal. It wasn't a fit place for human survival, and there was enough equipment and manpower to be used elsewhere. The ships' helicopters buzzed back and forth between the carriers and the air base for days, ferrying troops, supplies, and weapons to the ships, stationed in the deeper waters roughly fifty miles southwest of them, F/A-18s flying air cover to protect the carriers.

Martin Bedell sat in his Seahawk helicopter, carefully holding his bird still over the  _Nimitz's_ flight busy deck as he slowly lowered down, inch by inch. The carrier deck was a hive of activity; scores of men and women worked rapidly to stow away cargo from other helicopters hovering over the ship and dropping off supplies. Even isolated in their cockpit, hovering above the carrier, Bedell could feel the sense of urgency down there. They wanted to resupply both carriers and take on everyone and everything they could, and get out of there as soon as possible. Skynet's unmanned aircraft had already claimed a number of F/A-18Es and they didn't want to stick around to lose any more, or God forbid, the carriers themselves. They were probably the most powerful assets left after Judgment Day.

"Steady... steady..." he muttered to himself, concentrating as hard as he could on not descending too much or too fast.

"That's it, hold it there," his co-pilot said. Bedell kept his hand statue-still and held the helicopter in place as the cargo slung under his bird gently kissed the flight deck, and looked down as men rushed forward to release his burden from its harness. As soon as it was free, Bedell pulled the Seahawk upwards and turned back towards Elmendorf for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

"How many more of these runs have we got left before we get out of here?" Bedell said impatiently. Since they'd left for Alaska he'd not been in the best of moods; finding out John Connor had disappeared off the face of the earth had sent his morale plummeting and made him tetchy, to say the least. Not that not flying these missions would solve anything, but he felt more like a glorified delivery boy flying these supply runs, when he felt he should be doing something more useful.  _Maybe I was wrong to join the Navy,_ he thought.  _Should have stuck with the original plan; at least I'd be out there fighting the machines, instead of being stuck here doing nothing._  He still felt like they were sitting on their hands while others fought and died, and it didn't sit well with him.

"Got a couple more," Sam - his co-pilot - answered. "Cap'n Wallace wants all these artillery guns on board; says people could use them."

Bedell couldn't argue with that; they'd taken on enough heavy artillery pieces from Fort Richardson to turn their carrier into an old-style battleship if they'd wanted to. They were taking the hardware whilst the  _George Bush_  took on the survivors; the  _Nimitz_  had fewer aircraft now – losing several more in skirmishes with Skynet drones during their journey up through the Cook Inlet towards Anchorage, leaving them with only half of their normal complement, and extra space in the ship's hangars for spare equipment.

"You  _really_  don't like Alaska, do you?" Sam commented. "You've had a bug up your ass for days, now. What's up; this about Connor, again? He's gone, man."

"Whatever," Bedell rolled his eyes as he flew out over the water towards the base. He didn't really feel much like talking.

They flew for half an hour in silence; Bedell wrapped up in his thoughts about John Connor, and what they'd do if he really was gone; what  _he_ would do. John and his uncle had told him he was important to the resistance, that he helped John set the whole thing up in the first place. It didn't seem to be going that way right now; Connor had done a pretty good job of getting it started himself. He was just a flyboy; no one would listen to him, even if he had the slightest clue what to do now.

 _Damn it, Connor; why'd you have to disappear like that?_  The war had seemed to be going well just a few months ago; Skynet had still been in full control but they'd been fighting back. They'd had orders, command and control, and communications, when John was there. This new guy, Perry, was very quiet and had just left them to it. Things had started to rapidly fall apart.

They eventually crossed the water and flew over dry land, buzzing over the ruins of Anchorage and toward the air base.

"Okay," Sam said positively. "Looks like they've got this one ready for us." Bedell peered out of the cockpit and saw a 155mm howitzer rolled out and rigged up to a harness, ready to be attached to the belly of their helicopter. "Makes a change, the lazy bastards normally wait until we land before doing anything. Maybe the jarheads are good for something after all."

Bedell slowly started to descend over the open ground, ready to land and pick up their cargo once more, for  _yet another_  milk run, Bedell thought glumly.

_"Super-Six-One, come in. Bedell, drop what you're doing and return to the carrier immediately."_

"Super-Six-One to Zero Alpha," Bedell replied to the carrier uncertainly. "What's going on?"

Before the radio operator on the  _Nimitz_ had a chance to reply, sonic booms tore through the sky like cracks of thunder, the turbulence in their wake shaking the Seahawk around like a leaf on the wind, forcing Bedell to struggle to keep them in the air as alarms shrieked around him. Four delta-shaped aircraft tore past them, little more than blurs of gunmetal grey shooting through the sky.

"That's going on!" Sam pointed at the aircraft that had just shot past them. "Skynet's going after the carriers."

"Shit!" bedell swore. "You've got four aircraft closing in on you,  _Nimitz."_

_"We're aware, Super-Six-One. Aircraft are en route to intercept and Alert aircraft are being launched. Drop what you're doing and head back to us. We're leaving."_

"There's still people down there," Bedell argued. They couldn't just leave them there to fall victim to either the machines or the elements.

_"It's them or all of us, Super-Six-One. Return to carrier immediately or you'll be left behind. There's nothing we can do for them."_

"Roger that," he sighed, pissed off even more than ever. They were supposed to be helping people; that's what they were fighting for, wasn't it? What was the point in fighting the machines if they were just going to act like them? He knew it was war, he knew they had to make sacrifices, but it still made him feel like a complete bastard. Reluctantly, he pulled the Seahawk up into the air and turned around to the carrier, trying not to imagine the enraged faces of those down below as he abandoned them to their fates.

Jet fighters tore through the sky towards the incoming Skynet machines, outnumbering the unmanned intruders three to one. The Hornets' engines screamed as the pilots pushed their planes faster and faster, rushing out from their carriers like angry bees swarming out to defend their nest from intruders.

The Skynet UCAVs - X-47 Pegasus bombers - split into pairs and separated. The first pair unleashed all of their AMRAAMs at the defending squadron as the human fighters hastily returned fire; missiles streaked through the air, contrails crisscrossed as the weapons from both sides shot past each other and continued on to their targets. Both Pegasus aircraft were struck by several missiles each and shattered the drones in spectacular blasts, but their own weapons quickly closed the distance before the human pilots could evade. The luckiest of them managed to eject a split second before the air-to-air missiles detonated and tore eight of the planes apart in brilliant flashes of flame and shrapnel from the exploding aircraft, but he soon realised as his parachute canopy opened that he'd simply traded a quick, fiery end into a slow, cold, miserable death by hypothermia as he slowly and helplessly descended towards the icy waters of the Cook Inlet below.

On his way down he bore witness to the rest of the battle. The other two Pegasus drones shot past the one-sided aerial slaughter and accelerated to their maximum speed. Their weapons bays opened and two missiles shot forward from each aircraft as they peeled away to finish the remaining Hornets off.

The anti-shipping missiles ploughed through the air at tremendous speeds, descending to a mere fifty feet above sea level and skimming the waves as they closed in on the two carriers. The ships responded with an awesome barrage of fire as their close-in weapons systems activated and filled the air with a curtain of lead in a desperate attempt to shoot down the weapons as they rapidly closed in on the carriers.

From the cockpit of his Seahawk en route, Bedell could only listen helplessly to the frantic, frenzied radio broadcasts as the missiles flew closer and closer.

_"Two missiles still inbound; ten seconds to impact!"_

* * *

Cameron and Courtney followed the ragtag militia through the burnt out, wretched, decrepit remains of Carson City, through even more streets strewn with debris and dead bodies; some little more than bones with rags of cloth and flesh and blood stained to them; picked apart by carrion birds and other scavengers. They passed what had once been a clothing store on a block corner; one side of the building had collapsed in and the gaping glass display windows had been shattered into miniature shards that spilled out all over the pavement outside. The clothes inside had been burnt to blackened, charred cinders, stuck to half-melted plastic mannequins.

They passed the store and turned the corner, led by Bates. Courtney walked nervously alongside Cameron; she was going to stick close to her brunette companion no matter what. She didn't know why Cameron seemed so blasé about following these guys, when she'd been so security conscious since the moment they'd met.

As they rounded the corner they saw a pair of 4x4s parked up at the far end of the block on the other side of the road. A pack of dogs circled round a corpse on the cracked tarmac, hungrily tearing it apart and devouring the flesh greedily. The bones on the arms and legs were already picked clean and the pack fought over the contents of the torso, clamouring and clashing, snapping and growling at each other to get the lion's share of the food. The body had been so devoured and desecrated it was hard for even Cameron to tell whether it had been a man or a woman. Not that it mattered to her.

As they passed the pack snapped to attention as one, their eyes glared at Cameron and their ears pricked on end, and then launched an ear-splitting volley of rabid barks and snarls, sounding off like the hounds of Hades as they ran in unison towards her, intent on tearing her limb from metal limb.

Cameron watched as they charged her, knowing they were no threat to her at all. She was curious how dogs could always spot infiltrators; Skynet had worked hard to create machines that looked, felt, and even smelled like humans; she had sweat glands just like any human would, had bad breath if she ate particular foodstuffs, and even bruised and bled if her skin and flesh were damaged. She could easily deceive any human being, yet dogs could always tell her and other machines apart. Despite vast resources and intelligence beyond anything ever known on the earth before it, despite having vanquished the vast and mighty armies of man on Judgment Day, Skynet could never defeat man's best friend.

Courtney watched in horror as the dogs approached Cameron, intent on her blood. She pulled her rifle from her back, pointed it in the air above the dogs, and pulled the trigger. A volley of automatic fire burst from her rifle and cracked loudly through the air, stopping the dogs in their tracks. They turned tail and ran in fear from the gunfire, but not before Bates took aim with his own weapon and fired a single shot, the round struck the closest dog in the head and the impact of the round flipped it around in a shower of blood and brain matter. The group continued on to the vehicles on the other side of the road.

"Thank you," Cameron smiled at Courtney. The dogs were no real threat to her but she was grateful; nobody other than John had ever defended her. Even though she didn't need Courtney's help, it was still nice to have it. "You had the safety off," she commented, not even mentioning the fact her rifle had switched to automatic at some point. Courtney's weapon-handling was poor to the point of being dangerous; she'd have to show her how to use it after they'd got John back.

"Gee, you're welcome... I think," Courtney muttered in reply as they stopped at the 4x4s; a black, dusty GMC Topkick and a battered-looking civilian Hummer with a machine gun mounted on a tripod nailed into the roof.

"While we're on the subject," Bates turned round to them and grabbed Courtney's rifle by the barrel, snatching it out of her hands before she could react with anything more than a cry of shock. "We'll take your guns, now; you won't need them."

"What's going on?" Courtney asked as the men surrounded them

"We're not just gonna let you waltz into our base with guns, do you?" Bates asked rhetorically. "We don't know you."

"And we don't know you," Cameron replied, pulling her SCAR-H away as one of Bates' men tried to take it from her. She held it firmly, finger on the trigger, not quite pointed at them, but not away, either. She stood her ground when Bates stepped up close to her, close enough that his neck and chest filled her vision. Bates was a big man, bigger than Perry, even, and clearly knew how to use his size to intimidate. He was surprised, to say the least, that a five-foot-six teenage girl, who weighed about half as much as he did, didn't even flinch as he approached; either she was stupid or insane; it was hard to tell from the blank expression on her face, but it was clear she wasn't intimidated by him or his cohort in the least. Not like the blonde was; she shied away and hid behind Cameron; clearly the leader of the two.

"That's fine," Bates shot back at Cameron. "But we're not taking you armed to see Connor."

"You have a radio, right?" Courtney said. "Call him up and tell him Cameron's here to see him; he'll let us in." She hoped, anyway. From what Cameron had told her, John Connor would be ecstatic to see Cameron, but this wasn't the warm reception she'd expected from the guy Cameron told her about; the one she clearly admired for and cared about more than anything. She wondered again if this John Connor was as good a man as Cameron thought; killing people for taking food they'd claimed as theirs; didn't sound much like the great man she'd described. Maybe Cameron was simply naive; she did have that strangeness about her, like she wasn't quite right in the head. Or maybe John was one of those bastards that brainwashed their girlfriends and wives into thinking they were nothing without them. That seemed to be how Cameron felt, from what she'd said about her and John's relationship.

"Connor's on a mission; he requested radio silence," Bates answered, irritated.

That blonde chick was hot but she was really getting on his nerves. She had a mouth on her and he was tempted to show her how to use it, if only to shut her up. At least the brunette kept her trap shut.

"You wanna see Connor; give up the gun. Take it or leave it."

"I don't trust these guys," Courtney muttered nervously in Cameron's ear. Cameron understood Courtney's hesitation; they didn't know these men, but at the same time they knew John and they knew where he was, and they were offering to take them to him. Her choice was either to hand it over or they'd refuse to take them. She couldn't simply beat them for information on his location or to force them to take her because of the grenade launcher; it'd kill her before she could neutralise it. They had the advantage over them.

She nodded her head in agreement, flicked the safety on and handed the rifle to Bates. Courtney frowned in disapproval; Cameron had given up their only defence against them should these guys turn on them. She'd seen Cameron in action back at the high school; she didn't know how the heck she knew how to fight like she did, but she was tough. Still, no matter how good she was; she wasn't Jason Bourne or anything; without a gun they were at these guys' mercy.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Courtney said.

"I do," Cameron answered in a neutral voice. She had no choice but to do as they said, or she'd never see John again. Besides; if anything went wrong she could kill them easily enough even without a weapon. She  _was_  a weapon.

"Nice piece of hardware," Bates inspected Cameron's SCAR-H admiringly, it was much better than the bog-standard weapons they were using. How a teenage girl had gotten her hands on such a gun, he didn't know. These were normally Special Forces issue and these two didn't look like spec ops to him. Well, it was his now. "Where'd you get it?"

"Doesn't matter," Cameron said. "I did as you asked; take us to John."

"You don't tell me what to do, little girl," Bates growled. "Get in," he pointed to the Topkick as he opened the front passenger door and got in. Another of his men got in to drive and Cameron and Courtney sat in the back seat, before the two cars started and drove steadily through the war torn ruins of Carson City. The Topkick took the lead whilst the Hummer followed; Courtney could see one of the men stood up through the sunroof, to mount the machine gun on the roof. Cameron sat stock still in her seat, sitting back and her hands resting on her lap and her eyes staring straight forward, appearing to anyone who bothered to look at her like she was deep in thought. Courtney, on the other hand, kept one hand wrapped around the door handle to steady herself as the cars drove over debris, bodies, and numerous other obstacles that would have stopped a sedan in its tracks, and rattled the occupants inside around like pinballs as they gained speed.

They drove past street after street of death, desolation, and ruin; the cityscape a perfect microcosm for the rest of the world at large. They drove east, out of the city centre and through the suburban residential areas; the mighty brutes that were the Topkick and the Hummer easily picked their way over the piles of debris as they headed out through the outskirts.

"Where're we going?" Courtney asked. They'd been told to come to Carson City, and now they were leaving? This didn't make any sense.

"Just outside Virginia City; about twelve miles east of here," the driver replied.

"Why are we going there?" She asked. "We were told to come to Carson City."

"Did you have your eyes closed the whole time?" Bates laughed bitterly. "The whole place is a ruin; there's nothing left."

"Carson City isn't safe," Cameron turned to Courtney and spoke plainly.

"Because of the radiation?" That made sense to her; wouldn't be much good living somewhere after it'd been nuked.

"There's no radiation," Bates replied casually from the passenger seat in front of Cameron. "Carson City's chump change to Skynet; not worth wasting a nuke on."

"What happened?" Cameron asked, wanting to know, herself; she'd seen the ground zero wastelands of LA and San Diego in the future; over a mile of glassed earth and not much else. Everything within a mile of the detonation had been vaporised by the immeasurable heat of the fireball, which had eventually dispersed and left the following blast wave to simply flatten everything in its path for several miles around. Carson City's damage was mild in comparison to LA.

"Few days after the nukes fell, the mayor orders the National Guard units mobilised," Bates' driver continued while Bates stared out of the window, bored. "He puts all these calls out through Nevada calling for people to come to Carson City; says they'll be safe there.  _What a dumbass!_  Three months after J-Day the city's gone from fifty thousand people to five times that much and taking on new people every day; it's a fuckin' refugee camp. Food got scarce and they had to ration. Riots broke out; the National Guard spent more time backing up the cops and trying to keep the peace than they did watching out for machines.

"Whole place was at breaking point when the tin cans showed up; they couldn't have timed it any better," he gave out a short, sharp and bitter laugh.

"Then what?" Courtney asked.

"Then Skynet bombed the shit out of the place," Bates answered gruffly, twisting around to look at Courtney as he spoke, though his eyes never made contact with hers – instead they lingered on her chest, crotch, and then her thighs, making her shift uncomfortably and cross her arms over her chest defensively. She didn't know if Cameron noticed or was just ignoring it; since these guys said they knew John Cameron seemed to have stopped caring about anything else.

"How long did it take?" Cameron asked. "To destroy the city?"

"One night," Bates replied. Cameron didn't know how that was possible; that would take hundreds of HKs – more unmanned aircraft than even Nellis air base would have held at that time. It explained why they'd met such little resistance from aircraft when they'd attacked Area 51, though; they'd been busy bombing Carson City. The two events must have occurred at the same time. If Skynet hadn't bombed the city then their attack might have failed.

"It was B-52s," the driver added, once more joining the conversation. "Squadrons of them; Skynet must have flown them on remote or something. The tin cans came along later to clear out the survivors; finished off what the B-52s started."

Courtney couldn't even begin to imagine what it must have been like; to have been trapped helplessly while bombs rained down from above like a meteor shower and destroyed everything around them, and  _then_ to have survived all that, and crawled out of the rubble to find machines scouring for them, slaughtering any survivors they found.

They carried on driving out of Carson City and onto a straight desert road with signs for Virginia City. As they drew closer the two cars veered left onto a dirt road and away from the city, deeper into the desert. Cameron stared out the window, curious as to where they were going and why they were headed away from Virginia City; if she thought they were lying to her or they became a threat then she could easily deal with both of them in the car with ease; she'd force them to tell her where John was and then kill them. If they became a threat.

The two cars continued down the dirt road for some time until the two females in the Topkick saw any clue as to where they were going. Cameron saw tall metal structures just barely poking above a hilltop in the distance, gradually becoming more prominent as they approached it. They worked their way around the hill and she stared out the windshield at several cranes all around them, and a long conveyor belt led a hundred yards or so towards what looked like some kind of industrial processing plant. All around them stood abandoned mining equipment and large trucks. Some of the equipment looked almost brand new, but the isolation of the plant and the lifelessness of the whole area gave it the atmosphere of a ghost town.

The cars pulled up outside the building and the occupants exited their cars without a single word passing between any of them. The occupants of the Hummer joined them and Bates led them away from the plant and towards a mineshaft in the side of the hill that had concealed the plant from them on their approach. A pair of bored looking guards leaned against the brickwork, their rifles propped up against their shoulders as casually as if they were carrying shotguns on a weekend hunting trip. Clearly they thought the chances of Skynet finding them out in the desert were slim to none. They regarded Cameron and Courtney coolly as they approached with Bates and his men, a smirk passing between them as they nodded to Bates and let them through.

"Where are we?" Courtney asked, unsure of whether or not to go inside. She looked to Cameron for confirmation but Cameron showed no sign of concern at all. Not that that means a thing with Cameron, Courtney thought to herself; Cameron could have fallen out of an airplane with no parachute and her hair on fire, and her poker face would still probably not crack for even a moment.

"Old silver mine," one of them replied. "The cities are bombed to shit or wiped out by gas attacks; too many dead guys stinking out the place to live there. We set up here after the machines wiped everything out and started running ops."

"Inside; come on, let's go." Bates walked up to Courtney, placed a hand on her butt and pushed her out of his way as he passed her. She jerked away in shock at his touch, glaring at him in disgust. "You were in the way," he said simply, then turned back down towards the tunnel entrance and took the lead, switching on the flashlight attached to the barrel of his rifle and shining its bright beam down the black maw of the mineshaft entrance to illuminate the way for the others. The other men followed suit and turned on their own lights, while Cameron switched her vision from visible light to infrared without conscious thought.

They marched single file and in silence down the tunnel, sloping gently down as it descended deeper into the earth. The complete blackness of the shaft was punctuated further by the utter silence; not only from lack of conversation, but of any movement or life; complete sensory deprivation: Courtney wondered if this was what Purgatory was like. Bates led the way, followed by Cameron, then Courtney, and the other four men right behind them. Cameron saw why John and these men had chosen to establish a base in the mines; the entrance they'd passed through was too small for even herself and Courtney – the smallest of the group – to be able walk side by side. Larger machines such as the T-1s and T-2s wouldn't fit inside. T-70s could possibly squeeze inside but they'd have limited movement and would present easy targets to any human defenders; their fallen chasses would slow the advance of the units behind them and give the defenders a further advantage. Depending on the size of the mine complex and the number of entrances, a handful of human soldiers equipped with machine guns, grenades, and rockets could defend the mine from an army of machines for as long as their ammunition and supplies lasted.

As they progressed deeper into the mine the darkness gave way to a series of gas lamps hung from the sides of the tunnel, spaced every twenty metres and illuminating the shaft just barely enough for them to see where they were going; something that eased Courtney greatly as the only one without either a flashlight or the ability to see in the dark.

Eventually the tunnel widened and opened up into a wide cavernous area cut into the rock, filled with industrial equipment. A brief glance at the room was enough for Cameron to surmise that it had been carved out of the rock to create a storage area for heavy-duty mining equipment. An electric generator hummed in one corner of the room, inside a steel cage filled with various mining tools. Cables ran from the generator up towards lights on the ceiling and walls, illuminating the large room with a dull yellow glow. Stacked up next to the generator cage were several large drums of liquid. Cameron presumed it was gas to run the generator.

On the other side of the room was a second metal cage that housed an elevator. Bates pulled open the wire door and ushered Cameron and Courtney inside and followed after them into the small elevator, leaving the other men who Cameron presumed would follow after them. Bates pressed a switch and the elevator started to drop downwards, descending through a shaft cut into the sandy coloured rock all around them.

"I thought you said this was an old mine," Courtney said, tapping her fist against the mesh cage of the elevator. "This doesn't look that old to me." She'd thought it would be one of those old silver mines that were dotted all around the state, from Nevada's mining boom over a hundred years before.

"The mine was abandoned a long time ago," Bates explained. "Then some company claimed there was half a billion dollars' worth of silver still down there and reopened it two years ago. Fat lot of good it did them; greedy bastards. Where's their money now, eh?"

The elevator descended down thirty or forty metres and ground to a juddering halt before opening up to reveal another tunnel; this one slightly illuminated by a handful of lamps spaced out, doing little more than casting an eerie glow throughout the passage. They made their way along another twenty metres or so before the tunnel opened up into a cave with several tunnels leading in different directions like spokes on a wheel. Inside the cave was more mining equipment – all modern, almost brand new tools, piled up into a corner. There was also a small crowd of people in the cave; Cameron counted fifty-eight women and eleven children, stood, sat, or knelt on the ground, talking in hushed voices to each other or some just sitting alone. A mother clutched her two children close to her and tried to feed a third child – an infant – from a bottle. The baby simply cried loudly, it's screeching, wailing screams echoed around the cavern and, judging from the miserable, unsmiling faces of them all, was expressing what everyone else was inwardly feeling.

They all looked grimy and unwashed, and the musky, acrid odour of multiple unwashed bodies huddled together was another unpleasant sensation that assaulted Courtney's nostrils that day, though not anywhere near as bad as the stench of the corpses that had lined the shattered streets of Carson City. Unfortunately for her, she was the only one who was bothered by the smell; Bates and his men were used to the constant odour, and from the look of some of them, Courtney reckoned they simply added to the pungent tang. And unknown to her, Cameron couldn't really smell anything; she simply lacked any kind of olfactory senses. Machines didn't need a sense of smell.

"Who are these people?" Courtney asked. They looked like refugees or something; dirty, miserable and starving. She watched one woman walk up to an open barrel and stick a cup in to retrieve some water, then sipped it slowly as she regarded the newcomers with a strange, wary and knowing look that Courtney couldn't quite identify. She emptied the cup's contents down her throat and dipped it into another container; this time holding boiled rice. She took her food into a corner and ate in silence, eyeballing the two newcomers.

Cameron had seen this plenty of times in the future. Tunnel rats: civilians who lived under the protection of the soldiers but didn't fight. Food had been scarce and most of it went to those who were willing to pick up a weapon and fight the machines. Future John had told her, on the occasions he'd opened up to her when they'd been alone, that he wished it didn't have to be that way, but the soldiers needed to eat to be strong enough to fight. It made perfect sense to Cameron.

"Looks like we arrived just in time," Bates said. "Dinner's almost ready. Come on." He led them through one of the tunnels on the left, guiding them through another dimly lit passage that stretched on for twenty metres and opened up into another cave, smaller than the first one that housed all the 'tunnel rats', as Cameron called them. Inside this cave was a low table with various dishes set atop. Plates of sliced ham and beef, peas, carrots, beans, and other vegetables lined the table – all tinned foods, Cameron knew. Nothing fresh or frozen would have lasted more than a couple of weeks after Judgment Day. Two large ceramic bowls full of rice sat on each side of the table, and several platters of chocolates and candies filled up the remaining space on the surface.

"Sit," Bates told them, and sat himself down on the floor at the head of the table and beckoned Cameron and Courtney to sit next to him as several other militiamen entered the cave and sat down, followed by some of the civilians; all female, all young, and all fairly attractive, Courtney noticed. She also saw the mother who'd been trying to feed her baby was among the women escorted into the room as they sat down with the soldiers. This definitely didn't feel right to her. In total there were ten men and eleven women, including Cameron and Courtney.

"Eat," Bates told them all. He picked up a pack of Budweiser cans and opened one up for himself, before passing the pack to Courtney, on his left, who took a beer nervously and passed it onto Cameron, who likewise took a can and passed the rest on. Several six-packs went around, were opened with a distinctive crack and hiss of escaping gas, and gulped down greedily.

The men and women all set upon the table like ravenous piranhas with the scent of blood in the water, tearing through the food and piling it high on their plates, rapidly shovelling it into their mouths as if it was their last ever meal. Cameron watched them eat, noisily and sloppily, washing the food down with beer and swilling it around. She'd seen several similarities with the tunnels and bunkers in the future, since she'd arrived at the mine, but this scene was a stark contrast to her. People in the future never ate so messily. They ate quickly but they ate it all; food was so scarce in the future that people didn't waste any of it. There were no leftovers and nobody spilled their food on themselves or the ground.

Courtney took a small helping of rice, beef, and some vegetables, and ate slowly. Apart from the chocolate bar she'd eaten in the store, she'd not eaten properly in two days, and the sight and smell of the food made her stomach rumble hungrily. Something bothered her, still.

"What does everyone else eat?" She asked after she swallowed a mouthful of rice. "The people out there, I mean."

"They've got rations and water out there," Bates said with a noncommittal shrug. "We give them what we can."

"Doesn't seem fair to me," she replied quietly. People in the other room were sat around moping and starving, living on a little bit of rice and some water, whilst these guys gorged themselves and got drunk.

"When's John due back?" Cameron asked. She'd allowed them to disarm her and Courtney, they'd been led out of Carson City and into the mine, and now she wanted John. She had an almost limitless supply of patience, normally. But when it came to seeing John again and making him safe, it was a different matter.

"Soon," Bates answered as he opened another beer and downed half the can in one long gulp. He was getting annoyed with the constant questions coming from these two. "He's on a mission and he's coming back real soon, okay?"

"What mission?"

"That's classified," Bates snapped.

"I know John," Cameron said. "He trusts me."

"And I don't know you. He's never mentioned a 'Cameron' before, or a 'Courtney'.

Cameron tilted her head at his comment, confused. Why had John not mentioned her? Did he think she was dead? She'd been badly damaged by the HK's missile in Las Vegas and she was surprised that she'd reactivated afterwards. There had been a chance, before Cactus Springs, that John could have been dead, but she still told Courtney about him. She'd recruited her help to find John. What mission was he on? She knew John, and likely it would be dangerous. But there was nothing she was aware of that was valuable in Nevada, save for Area 51 and Nellis air base.

Courtney sipped her beer thoughtfully in silence. She didn't want to drink a lot of it; she wasn't a fan of beer anyway but she didn't want to ask if they had anything else.

"You're very quiet," Bates said, resting his hand on her knee and stroking her thigh slightly, sending another shiver up her spine. She didn't know what to do; Bates had looked at her funny ever since they'd met, and she had a really bad vibe from him, but she had a feeling that she couldn't just tell him to get lost; that wouldn't go down very well.

"What's John doing here?" Cameron asked, she'd noticed how uncomfortable Courtney was and asked her question, in part, to shift Bates' attention to her and not Courtney, who took a few pieces of chocolate and ate them quietly; hoping Bates would just ignore her. She wanted to ask Cameron to switch places with her, but didn't want to upset anyone and make a scene.

"Fighting Skynet, of course," Bates grinned.

"How?"

"That's the beautiful part," a young man on the other side of the table joined in their conversation, between mouthfuls of rice and beer. "We operate with impunity here; Skynet nailed the whole area with airstrikes and chemical weapons; almost everyone around here's dead, and the National Guard in Carson City left behind a lot of hardware. Right now we're securing weapons, ammo and supplies. Connor's got a plan, we trust him."

"Skynet will find you eventually," Cameron said.

"Not a chance," Bates replied. "As the kid said; everyone here's dead. The threat from Skynet has come and gone. We're safe."

Cameron frowned at Bates' words. 'No one is ever safe' had been drilled into John by his mother since he was a child. John would never feel safe anywhere. He'd told her before that he'd only ever felt truly safe with her in their quarters in Cheyenne Mountain. The machines couldn't reach him there and she could hear any human presence coming before anyone entered their room, whether or not they knocked on the door. That, plus the civilians hoarded into the other cave. Although feeding the soldiers took priority over the civilians, John wouldn't have allowed them to starve while the soldiers gorged themselves on food and alcohol.

"Did John say you were safe?" she asked, sensing something was amiss.

Before Bates could answer, a guerrilla fighter emerged from the tunnel and marched up to him, bending over and whispering in his ear. Bates smiled and dismissed the man.

"Connor's back, it seems. Corey here will take you to him. And you," he stood up and pulled Courtney to her feet as well. "Are coming with me," he grinned wolfishly. Several other soldiers got up and left out of the tunnels, each taking one of the women with them and disappearing.

"What's going on?" Courtney asked, pulling her arm out of Bates' grip and backing away.

"Fair trade," he replied and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her away and out through one of the tunnels before she could make any further protest.

"Cameron?" she called nervously. She wanted to leave now, more than anything in the world. Her every instinct told her to run.

Cameron passed Courtney and Bates, but so intently focused was she on finally seeing John once more, that she ignored Courtney and followed Corey. She didn't see Bates and Courtney disappear down the tunnel.

Corey led her through the darkened rocky passageway; holes in the sides of the tunnel had been fitted with doors to create rooms and separate them from the tunnel proper, to give privacy to the men as they slept, Cameron assumed. Even in the future, people preferred to sleep separate from the main living areas in the tunnels and bunkers. When they could. They'd had communal bunks, normally holding ten to twenty fighters or so. Hot-bunking had also been common, since there had been more people than cots and mattresses.

Corey led her to the last partition at the end of a tunnel and knocked on the door.

"Connor, someone wants to see you." He nodded to Cameron to enter and she pushed open the door. Being a machine, she processed information several times faster than any human could. All at once she felt elation at finally having gotten to John, excitement at being with him once more, and relief that he was safe and alive. Already, before she'd even opened the door halfway, she was thinking of how she and John would return to Cheyenne Mountain to resume his leadership of the resistance, and another part of her looked forward to spending some time alone with John.

She pushed the door open and shut it behind her, slowly stepping into the darkened room, lit only by a single bulb in one corner, opposite a sleeping bag and inflatable mattress on the other side of the room. There was a single occupant inside: a tall man in his early forties, black hair and bright blue eyes, and stubble bristling on his hardened face and square jaw. He was a full head taller than Cameron. She'd never seen this man in her entire existence; past, present, or future. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion and she found her fist clenching and twitching, much like they'd done when she'd once confronted Riley in John's shed. She didn't know who this man was but she had but a single question for him.

"Who are you?"


	16. Not John Connor

_"Connor to Command, requesting reinforcements at the Wal-Mart on Market Street; the crowd's getting ugly and we could use some backup."_

_"Negative Connor, we've got no backup to give; riots have broken out at the capital building again; we're rerouting 3_ _rd_ _and 4_ _th_ _Squads there to provide support."_

_"Shit!" First Lieutenant Dave Connor covered his mic and cursed. Things had not been going his way today. Chaos reigned in Carson City: the vast numbers of refugees taken in daily, fleeing from the machines' unstoppable path of destruction, had grown far too many for the city to handle. Yet they still poured in from Nevada and California in a seemingly endless tide of desperation and despair._

_Food, water, and medical supplies had been strictly rationed, flaring anger amongst many in the population who felt the mayor, the military, and the National Guard were holding out on them. Crowds had gathered outside the capital building regularly to demonstrate against the martial law declared by the mayor. Civil Rights campaigners and left-leaning members of the city's population had been aghast when the mayor had handed over policing powers to the National Guard, and protests had started almost around the clock. Soldiers had been posted outside supermarkets and convenience stores as they protected what food there was from looters. Fights had broken out over diminishing supplies and civil unrest had flared._

_Dave Connor of the Nevada National Guard had been assigned to protect a Wal-Mart store and to assist with the distribution of supplies. A crowd had gathered outside it to receive food and water, and hadn't been best pleased when they'd rationed it out. There just wasn't enough to go around and they'd had to be stringent. Fights had broken out when some people had tried to queue up twice, or members of the same families had split up in the crowd to gain more food and water for themselves._

_The breaking point had come when one group had spread out through the queues and acquired over a dozen large bottles of water and enough food to feed half a dozen families. Other civilians hadn't been content to simply allow them to cheat and steal, and several who'd brought guns from their homes had shot at their car as they'd tried to get away. Shooting had erupted in the crowd as people tried to take from each other by force. When that didn't work, the crowd had rallied against Connor and his squad, demanding they step aside and let them in._

_"Give me that," Connor took a bullhorn from the sergeant next to him and stood up atop one of the two Humvees forming a barricade in front of the store entrance. He stood tall on the car's roof as his men held their ground, weapons made ready and held firm in their hands, ready to fire if the crowd tried to rush them. Connor wasn't going to suffer the same fate as some soldiers guarding other stores._

_"Everyone back away," he called out, the bullhorn amplifying his voice considerably, even above the din of the crowd as the yelled and screamed and pushed and pulled and clawed and shoved against themselves and Connor's men. "Return to your homes immediately or we_ will  _open fire."_

_The soldiers all brought their weapons to bear on the crowd, fingers hovered over triggers and the air of tension among them was unbearable. None of them wanted to open fire on civvies but at the same time they feared for their lives. Connor's platoon had been divided and there were only twelve of them left to guard the store against a crowd of more than three-hundred._

_One of the men cocked the machine gun mounted atop the other Humvee and pointed it at the centre of the crowd, emphasising further that they weren't playing about._

_Connor felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and nervous sweat dripped down his face. He hadn't signed up for the National Guard for this; Jesus. H. Christ, he was a schoolteacher; this kind of crap shouldn't be left up to him. Some of his kids' parents could be in the crowd for all he knew. Not that he'd done much teaching since the bombs had fallen, but still._

_"This is your final warning!" he yelled at them, nervously clutching his own rifle, as they made no attempt to disperse and instead pushed even further towards them. Some in the mob threw stones and other objects at the soldiers. A brick flew out from the crowd and struck one of his men in the face, felling him instantly. The two men on either side of him opened fire at the perpetrator; their rounds tore through him and penetrated through, hitting the civilians behind them and wounding them as well._

_A few people in the crowd started throwing more improvised missiles at them and others at the front pushed forward in response to the soldier's shooting, rage and murder in their eyes as they surged towards the troops._

_There was nothing else he could do, Connor knew; the crowd were baying for blood and it was this or allowing himself and his men to be lynched. He gulped and knew he was going to burn in hell for this one day. "Fire at will!" he shouted out at his men, took aim with his own rifle and fired a round into one rioter's chest, killing him before he hit the ground and tripping up those behind him as they advanced. The soldiers fell back behind their Humvees and fired single shots into the rioters, who responded by throwing even more improvised weapons._

_A flaming spirit bottle was tomahawked from somewhere in the crowd and exploded on the Humvee, the Molotov cocktail setting the machine gunner and two other men alight and causing them to run around flailing in panic as their clothes and skins burned. Shots were fired at his men by rioters who'd brought their guns from home, and another soldier went down with two bullet wounds in his face._

_"Fuck this," Connor growled. They could have the damn Wal-Mart if they wanted it that bad. "Fall back..." Connor fell backwards onto the ground and as two rounds struck him in the groin and thigh. He didn't feel the pain all that much; shock and adrenaline saw to that. As he lay there he looked up and saw several shapes ploughing slowly through the sky, contrails in their wake as they flew up high in the air, too high to be heard. He was in too much shock from the gunshots to count them, but there were a lot; it was like looking at a flock of birds; there were whole squadrons of them. He tried to ignore the pain as it overwhelmed the numbing effect from the shock and took over, burning his crotch and his thigh as if they were on fire. Still, he kept his eyes on the aircraft above and raised his arm to the sky, pointing, trying to show his men._

_Explosions rained all around them, erupting into brilliant fireballs that blossomed like deadly, fiery flowers and shattered everything around them; Connor realised that the planes above were heavy bombers. Rioters and soldiers alike stopped in their tracks and simply froze for a long moment as hundreds of explosions could be heard from all around the city, a rapid, unending series of loud_ bangs _like hundreds of giant firecrackers all going off in succession, rocking the ground beneath them. The rioting crowd turned and fled in all directions, screaming, trampling over each other, pushing and shoving to get away in a deranged panic, crushing several of their number underfoot as they fell and were trampled by those behind._

_Connor's men stayed put and he was vaguely aware of one of his soldiers working on him, trying to patch him up. One of them must have injected him with morphine at some point, because he felt nothing more than a dull ache below his waist and a giddy sense of euphoria._

_The last thing he saw was an explosion of fire, glass, brick, and plaster that erupted outwards and consumed his men stood above him as a 2000lb JDAMS struck the Wal-Mart behind them, obliterating his squad and turning his world black and silent._

 

* * *

 

_Five men stalked through the ruins of the city; all armed with military carbines and equipped with webbing and belt kits, despite being dressed in civilian garb. The leader of this group, a tall, dark haired man in his forties, blazed a trail through the rubble as they passed. Skynet had done a real number on this place, he thought. Taking in too many civvies, he thought. That's what did it; Carson City must have looked like an all-you-can-eat buffet to Skynet's monstrous machines._

_He led them past what was left of a Wal-Mart store; the whole thing had been shattered by a direct hit from a bomb and covered the whole area in shattered bricks and masonry, with shards of glass and jagged lengths of steel jutting out here and there, just waiting to be tripped on. Not by him, though; he knew how to handle himself; not like the faggot National Guard who'd tried to run the city like their own personal little empire, then fallen flat on their faces when the civilians got all pissed off. Had he been in charge, he'd have put the fear of God into those ingrate civvies; shoot a few upstarts to get the message across that_ he _was in charge; none of this minimum force bullcrap that the military spouted about these days. H_ e  _looked at the shattered Humvees, the fallen soldiers, and he was not impressed. The military had gone soft since his day._

_"Don't take too long," he said to his men. "Tin cans will follow up after the bombing raid; we don't wanna get caught out in the open." They could handle a pissy little T-70, alright. What he didn't want to see was the T-2s; the National Guard were all armed with just rifles and had nothing that could take on those tank-killing monsters._

_"McGinty; we've got a live one, here!" Bates, his second in command and former cellmate called out to him. McGinty turned back towards Bates stood knelt down over a soldier half-buried in the rubble and muttering to himself. The soldier's face was cut and bruised, his uniform torn and dirty, barely concealing two bullet wounds._

_"Looks like you're in the shit, soldier," McGinty grinned as he reached out with his left hand and, with Bates' help, pulled the man out from beneath the debris._

_"Help me," the soldier begged hoarsely. None of the men made any move to assist him, least of all McGinty._

_"Why should I?" he asked; his face darkening and anger setting in as he spoke. "The Army never helped_ me _out; not after_ fifteen _years of service to my country. What did I get; court-martialled and two years in prison." He'd always been pissed off about that; guys like this guy were promoted for keeping quiet and doing as they were told; not showing the slightest bit of initiative. He'd always figured that's what the jarheads on the frontline were for, though; robots who just did as they were told and killed the enemy. But not him; oh no; he'd spent his career in Military Intelligence, been considered promising, too; until he'd been accused of so called 'war crimes,' and 'human rights violations' against captured Taliban insurgents. He'd spent two damn years in prison in Fort Knox, only let out when Skynet had a hissy fit and blew up half the world. He'd then made his way to his native Nevada with a few of the men he'd done time with._

 _The Army had gone soft in his opinion; he'd done what he'd had to do for his country. And if that had meant slapping around a few ragheads here and there then he didn't see the problem. His 'superiors' however, hadn't seen it that way. Bunch of fags run by a pussy-whipped liberal government. They'd gone soft on terror and they'd gone even softer allowing a damn computer to run the military._ Just look how  _that_  had worked out, h _e rolled his eyes in disgust. Right now, to Chris McGinty, this soldier was a symbol for the pathetic military establishment that had turned its back on him; he didn't feel all that sympathetic._

_"The way I see it, you guys are responsible for all this: you brought this on us, so why should we help you?"_

_"P...please," the soldier pleaded. He reached out and grabbed McGinty by the wrist, looking up desperately into his eyes, his pain was all too apparent. McGinty looked down at the invalid form of the soldier, and then saw the Lieutenant's insignia on the shoulders. His disdain for the man, upon seeing his rank, increased tenfold. It was idiots like this that had hung him out to dry for trying to keep his country and his comrades in the Army safe._

_He placed his M4 down on the ground and knelt down at his side, just by his head. He slowly pulled a knife out from his belt kit as he rested his hand on the lieutenant's shoulder._

_"Do you know what I hated most about the Army?" he asked casually. When he saw that the lieutenant was starting to drop out of consciousness he slapped him round the face to bring him round, rather unsuccessfully, and continued regardless. "It's the fucking officers. You don't have a clue, do you? You have no idea what we're fighting right now. The rest of the world is fighting, dying, and you're here playing nanny to a bunch of refugees; pathetic. "_

_Still, he wasn't a cruel man. Not really. He just did what needed to be done, even if it offended some sensibilities. He pulled the soldier's chin back and ran the his blade across the throat as hard as he could, slicing through skin, muscle, veins and windpipe, turning the man to the side as the blood gushed out of him like a fountain and sprayed onto the ground. The lieutenant kicked and bucked and writhed; he tried to scream but all that came out was a gurgle, accompanied by a wet clicking sound from his severed windpipe._

_"I'm doing this to be kind," he whispered to the lieutenant as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he finally lay still. He was still a soldier, even if a pathetic excuse for one, and in McGinty's eyes, didn't deserve to slowly die of his injuries or wait for the machines or scavenging animals to come calling. What he did was an act of compassion._

_He wiped his knife on the lieutenant's trousers, trying to get all the blood he could off of it, and then stood away from the body. As the corpse rolled onto its back, McGinty saw the nametag stencilled onto the jacket; he couldn't believe he hadn't noticed it before:_ Connor.

 _This faggot couldn't be_ the _Connor, could he? Had he just slashed the throat of John Connor? That man - that voice on the radio that claimed to know what to do - was meant to be a general, not a lieutenant._

_An idea struck him suddenly: people followed Connor; he seemed to know how to fight the machines, so they followed him despite having never met nor even heard of him. He was obviously some old fart sitting in his office in Cheyenne Mountain, issuing orders to the real soldiers like him who did all the chopping and put their necks on the line. The old man would get them all killed, in all likelihood. He'd lost faith in the Army the day he'd been court-martialled._

_He only trusted himself to get the job done, and his men trusted him to lead them; they'd all been screwed over by the Army as well, and didn't trust the military to fight the machines._ If you want something done, you've gotta do it yourself, _he thought. People followed John Connor; he'd give them John Connor. He rolled Connor's body over onto its front and pulled the jacket off, gave thanks that he'd turned the man onto his side and most of the blood had missed the jacket, and donned it himself. It fit well, he thought. It was a lucky coincidence this Connor and himself were a similar size._

_He was Connor, now. He'd lead mankind and show them how it was all done; they'd follow him, as John Connor, to victory over the machines. It had to be him; nobody else had a fucking clue._

* * *

"Who are you?" Cameron asked as she stared at him, scanning him from head to toe. He wore civilian clothes much like Bates and his men, apart from a DPM print military jacket sporting epaulettes on his shoulders bearing a Lieutenants' insignia, yet Cameron could tell by his appearance, and the way he held himself, that he was clearly not military. Cameron was disturbed by the name stencilled on his bloodstained jacket, however:  _Connor._

Her hands twitched even more as she processed the myriad possibilities as to why he had the name Connor on his jacket. It wasn't John's; the jacket was too big to be John's. This man, posing as John Connor, was too big for John's jacket to have fitted. His chest and shoulders were too broad – larger than Derek's but smaller than Perry's. Also, the  _Connor_  on John's jacket had been obscured by Cromartie's rounds, tearing holes through the uniform before flattening against the coltan-plated flak jacket she'd made him wear.

"I've gotta give it to Bates," the impostor grinned slyly, ignoring Cameron's question as he looked her up and down. "The man has good taste." After a shitty day out in Virginia City - a fruitless recon mission that had been two days of wasted time - today started to look up. One of his men had reported to him that Bates had brought two more in from Carson City; he wasn't expecting such a creature of exquisite beauty as this Cameron, however; lender, sleek – but still with curves – and a long, silky mane of chocolate brown. Yes, he had a feeling tonight would be a good night, indeed.

"Where's John?" Cameron demanded. She was confused; this wasn't her John. This was nobody. Why was he pretending to be John Connor?

"I'm John Connor," he replied evenly. "Don't worry; you're safe from the machines down here."

"You're not John; where is he?" Cameron asked once more. She found her left hand twitching uncontrollably as she realised she'd been lied to. She felt the sudden urge to terminate this man, and had to consciously resist it, for now at least. He might know where John was; she'd find out, either way.

"You're very beautiful, you know that?" He asked, ignoring her once again as he turned back towards a bottle of twelve-year-old whisky he kept near his sleeping bag and poured the brown liquor into a pair of glasses. "Drink?" he held out one glass and offered it to Cameron. "It's twelve years old; great stuff," he smiled amicably. Sometimes the drink helped loosen them up a bit; whatever he could do to make her more comfortable. This one wasn't going to be quick like the others; like a fine wine she had to be savoured and appreciated.

Cameron just stared at him as he held the drink out to her. She stood stock still for a long moment before finally accepting the glass from him. She saw him smile as she took his drink and saw his eyes wonder over her, much like Bates had done with Courtney. She knew what he was expecting; the alcohol was meant to lower her inhibitions and make her more open to his advances. She looked down at the brown liquor in the glass. It wouldn't work on her; she was a machine. She couldn't get drunk, nor could she taste or smell the smoky liquid inside. She did think of one use for the drink, however.

"Why don't we sit down over here," he gestured to the sleeping bags on top of an inflatable mattress. "We can get more comfortable and..." Cameron smashed the tumbler in the centre of his face, the shattered glass cutting him deeply and the strong liquor burning his eyes.

 _"What the fuck?"_ He stumbled backwards, hands clawing at his face and groaning in agony as blood poured down from a deep just above his eye, mixing in with the whisky and blinding him further. "What the hell...?"

"Where's John?" Cameron demanded, slapping his hands away from his face and glaring at him. She grabbed him by his jacket with one hand and hoisted him up off his feet.

"I  _am_  John Connor, you crazy bitch!" he yelled back as squirmed and struggled to free himself from her grasp. How the hell was this girl even holding him up? She couldn't be more than a hundred-and-ten pounds. He beat at her wrists futilely to break her grip, to no avail. That was the wrong answer for Cameron; she was pissed, to say the least. She'd been led to the mine on false pretences so that this imposter – a man pretending to be John – could have sex with her. Cameron didn't hold grudges – that was a human trait – but her journey here had cost her time that could have been used to find John. Wherever he was, it wasn't here, and every day wasted decreased her chances of finding John.

She loosened her grip on his jacket and launched a palm-strike to his chest with her other hand, forcing the air out of his lungs and propelling him across the room to crash into a steel locker propped up against the wall – likely left behind from when the mine was worked. He struck the locker in a loud clatter and landed on the floor in a battered heap. Cameron offered no respite and marched up to him, grabbing him by the jacket and hoisting him up to his feet.

"Fuck you!" he spat. Cameron slammed his face against the wall, heard and felt the crunch of cartilage against the rock, and slammed him down to the floor on his back, pinning him on the ground by his neck. Cameron wasn't cruel by design, but something inside her felt an odd sense of satisfaction from seeing him suffer.

"Who are you? Where's John Connor?" She asked once more.

"Fuck-" Cameron heard someone approaching and squeezed his throat hard, stealing his breath away as someone knocked on the door from the outside.

"Are you okay in there, sir?"

"I'm fine, fuck off!" Cameron shouted back in a deep male voice, mimicking the impostor flawlessly. He looked up at her in horror as he heard his own voice replicated from her lips, but she was choking him completely, rendering him unable to call out for help or even make the slightest sound.

"Are you sure, sir?"

Cameron changed her voice back to her own and copied something she'd once caught John watching on late-night television between her patrols.

"Oh! Oh my God, baby! Yes! Yes! OH!" She cried out in mock ecstasy. The imposter recoiled as he watched her verbal display of passion; it sounded so real and so convincing yet her face remained completely blank and emotionless.

Cameron kept her iron grip around his neck, watching his eyes roll upwards and the veins starting to bulge in his temples. She could feel his pulse under her fingertips and his heart was rapidly beating in panic, but faltering gradually, becoming irregular. He wouldn't last much longer. She heard the men behind the door walk away and chuckle to themselves, commenting how 'Connor always did like it rough'. When she was satisfied they were out of earshot she finally released him and got back up on her feet, towering over his prone form.

The fake-John wheezed and coughed and spluttered as he desperately tried to suck in more air. She stood over him for a moment, allowing him to regain his breath. She wanted him to talk; he needed to be able to breathe.

"Who... who the hell are you?" He asked, rubbing his red-raw throat, incredulous how such a small girl no older than eighteen or twenty could be so strong.

Cameron didn't answer his question but instead made her eyes glow bright blue under her organic irises. The impostor backed away from her in sheer terror, scared witless at the sight of her now, his confident bravado abandoned him at the sight of her glowing eyes.  _"What_  the hell are you?" he gasped as Cameron still stood threateningly over him. She was a damn machine. He'd thought they'd be safe but she'd gotten in right under their noses. To think he'd have fucked a robot!

"I won't ask you again," Cameron tried once more. "I'll kill you if you lie to me again."

"Okay... I'm not John Connor; my name is Chris McGinty. I am...  _was..._  a soldier." "Where's John, Chris McGinty?" Cameron asked.

"I don't know," he blurted out, knowing he sounded desperate and pathetic, but not caring one iota as long as this monstrosity in the shape of a girl didn't kill him. "I honestly don't know." He dare not mention that he murdered a lieutenant named Connor, on the off chance that he was the same man she was looking for.

"Last I heard he was in Cheyenne Mountain. That's all I know; I swear to God."

"Why did you bring us here?" Cameron asked. "You said you knew how to fight Skynet. What's your plan?"

"Pretty much what you've seen already, we bring people here. Skynet's done in this area. While Skynet's busy with the rest of mankind we wait here. That's what the women are here for: they have kids, the kids grow into soldiers; twenty years' time we'll have an army to take on Skynet." It had been an ingenious plan, in his opinion. Skynet would busy itself with extermination, never knowing that an army was slowly growing underground. He'd planned to expand his forces into neighbouring cities and towns, amalgamating the useful survivors into his forces.

"That's not what you're doing," Cameron said blankly. That might have been his original intention, but she'd seen people like him in the future; warlords who separated themselves from John Connor's Resistance, only interested in ruling their own territory. Most of them had been located and destroyed by Skynet. Cameron had never understood why they wanted to remain separate; they'd stand a better chance at survival if they'd cooperated with the Resistance. She still didn't fully understand humans; they were unpredictable, they did stupid things.

"You're not fighting Skynet," Cameron accused.

"Wanna bet?" McGinty made a dash for a pistol by his makeshift bed, intent on putting a bullet through whatever the hell she had for a brain. He didn't get far; Cameron shot her hand out with reflexes a preying mantis would have envied, snatched him by the throat once more and started choking the life out of him.

Chris McGinty was a threat; not to her but to John. Not only had he led her away from where John might really be, but his operation was a threat; he was using John's name for personal power. People would turn to him instead of her John. John's reputation would be damaged; people would doubt him, they wouldn't trust him. Chris McGinty would undermine John's Resistance. He was a threat she wouldn't tolerate.

She watched as his eyes bulged in their sockets and he turned red, then blue, as she starved him of oxygen. He clawed helplessly at her hands and tried to loosen her grip, beating at her wrists futilely and struggling like a fly caught in the spider's web. His legs buckled beneath him and he fell to his knees, but still Cameron was unrelenting. She felt the life starting to slip away from him as his pulse slowed and his blood pressure dropped. He'd be dead in seconds, and another threat to John would be gone. Then she'd find Courtney and they'd continue on their search...

 _Courtney_ : Bates had led her away, just like the other men had with their women, like she'd been led to McGinty. She threw him to the floor and spun on her heel, opened the door and stepped out. She heard a laboured, shallow, desperate breath emanate from him. He wasn't dead, not yet. She'd come back and kill him once she'd found Courtney.

* * *

Bates ushered a nervous Courtney into his room and closed the door behind him as he followed, then propped Cameron's SCAR-H and his own rifle against the wall and approached her. Courtney wanted out; her every instinct was to run and hide but Bates was between her and the only exit in the room.

"Sit," he said, grinning. "Make yourself comfortable." Courtney looked around the room and saw a double-sleeping bag on top of a pile of straw. She moved away from it and backed up as Bates approached her. She retreated until her back touched the rocky wall behind her and she had nowhere else to go.

Bates took her hand and pulled her back into the centre of the room, and moved behind her, placing his hands on her petite shoulders and leaning, resting his chin on the back of his left hand so his cheek nestled against the side of her face. Courtney tried to shrug him away and shuddered at Bates' bristly stubble rubbing on the side of her jaw; it was irritating as well as creepy. "You're very beautiful, Courtney."

"I  _really_  should go check on Cameron," Courtney shrugged as hard as she could and pulled out of his grasp. She wanted nothing more than to get away from this creep; she hadn't trusted him from the moment she'd laid eyes on him, but she'd trusted Cameron and followed her lead down here. Now she realised that was a big mistake; Cameron was so obsessed with finding John Connor that she'd either not noticed what was going on around her or just blatantly ignored it. Courtney didn't see how either was possible; anyone should have been able to tell what was going on, and if John Connor was behind this then he wasn't the kind of guy she wanted to be around; especially as he was taking advantage of Cameron's naivety.

"Cameron's fine," Bates said, moving to block the doorway before Courtney reached it. "She's with Connor."

"That's what worries me," she replied quietly. Bates took her hand once more and led her – using his superior size and strength - towards his sleeping bag, sitting her down on the ground and wrapping one of his arms around her shoulders.

"Just relax," he said, flicking the blonde bangs away from her face with his other hand. He cupped her chin and pulled her face towards him, quickly lowering himself towards her and pressing his lips against hers, sliding his tongue into her mouth. Courtney pulled back and snapped to her feet in knee-jerk terror, backing away from him and fighting the urge to vomit. Bates shot out his hand once again and pulled her back to him, she refused to sit back down and instead stood there, digging her heels in and pulling away from him.

"Get off me!" she shrieked at him, pulling back but helpless against his grasp. He was twice her size and much stronger than her; and with Cameron preoccupied with John, nobody was coming to help. Bates got up and backhanded her hard across the face, knocking her sprawling to the ground. She tasted blood as one of her teeth cut the inside of her mouth, and she spat it out onto the floor. She looked longingly at the door and tried to get up but Bates was on top of her in an instant, spinning her around onto her back and straddling her, pinning her to the ground.

"Please... just let me go," she sobbed as tears started to well up in her eyes.

"Who the  _fuck_  do you think you are, hmm?" Bates leaned down until his face was inches from hers and she could smell the beer and tobacco on his breath, making her stomach churn. "You spoilt little bitch; we brought you in here, we fed you, sheltered you, and you seriously think that all comes for  _free?_  Everything has a price."

He remained leaned over her and his hands wandered up her front, sliding under her shirt up her chest and she felt him grow hard against her stomach as he pressed against her. He leaned in once more but she brought her head up as fast and as hard as she could and smacked her forehead against Bates' face, blood gushed out from his mouth and nose and onto her face and he recoiled back, clutching his face in pain.

"Fucking bitch!" he roared out in anger as he drew back a ham-sized fist and punched her in the face with an audible  _smack._ Courtney collapsed back onto the hard floor and starbursts appeared before her as she lay there in a daze. She was vaguely aware of Bates tearing her shirt and unbuckling her belt, but she couldn't summon herself to fight anymore. She closed her eyes and sobbed and cried, and just hoped it would be quick...

Cameron kicked the door open and stepped through, surveying the scene in front of her with a frown. She saw Bates knelt over Courtney, her shirt torn at the front and pink bra exposed underneath. Bates held her pinned down and was working on unbuckling her belt. Courtney was unresponsive, her eyes closed, and Cameron heard her sobbing quietly.

She processed what she saw in a millisecond; the sight of Bates knelt over Courtney brought a painful memory to the surface.

_Cameron rounded the corner and marched past the two soldiers, ignoring their comments. Both Wright and Jackson, respectively, had made advances on her previously, and she had bluntly declined them. She felt uncomfortable around them, despite posing no threat to her or John._

_Their eyes were slightly glazed over and Cameron deduced they were either fatigued or inebriated, or both. The pair of them sauntered up to her, grins on their faces. Wright moved up closer to Cameron, his face inches from her. She just stared blankly into his eyes, wondering what he was doing as he wrapped one arm around her and pulled her close to him. "So, Cameron, how about we get to know each other better? Anyone told you you're the prettiest one here?"_

_Cameron ignored his question; her attention was drawn to the man's rifle, which was loaded with the safety off. And now they were closer, Cameron detected alcohol on his breath. He was clearly drunk._

_"Never mind this," Wright said, seeing Cameron staring at his rifle. "If you want to see a really_ _big gun,_ _just come see me." He grinned and grabbed his crotch for emphasis as his other hand went around Cameron's waist and down to fondle her backside._

_"No, thank you. I'm not interested in_ _small arms."_ _John had taught her that one during their senior year in school after several of the football team jocks had come on to her in a similar manner. Cameron brushed his hand off her and tried to turn away towards the storage room, when Jackson blocked her path._

_"Hey, hey, we're just getting to know each other. Don't go spoiling things."_

_"You're drunk. You should return your weapons to the armoury," Cameron said, hoping they'd leave her alone._

_"I'll put my weapon_ somewhere," _Wright said as he ground his crotch into her backside, placed a hand over her right breast and slid the other down towards her crotch. That was enough to overwhelm Cameron; not knowing how to handle unwanted attention like that, she froze. She'd watched enough TV to know what sexual advances were, and she knew that that was exactly what they were doing, and it upset her deeply. She only felt comfortable with John being in such close proximity and touching her in that manner. Not that he ever did, not like that. She replayed memories of the nights they'd made love, remembered the way he'd gently kissed and caressed her, how she'd lovingly returned the gesture._

_John was with Jessica Morgan, she thought yet again as Wright started to slide a hand inside her underwear. John didn't want her, she was just a machine. So that's what she would be. She closed her eyes and resigned herself to whatever the two men were going to do to her, and she would feel nothing. She was just a machine..._

Cameron advanced on Bates and grabbed him from behind, pulling her off of Courtney and dragging him backwards. Courtney felt Bates' weight disappear from atop her, lifted her head up and opened her eyes to see Bates struggling in Cameron's grip, helpless as an infant as she held his head in an unbreakable iron grip. It was impossible to tell from her face, but Courtney could see the barely contained rage in Cameron's eyes.

She sharply twisted his head around with an audible  _snap,_ breaking his neck like a twig with such force she nearly tore his head off. His body instantly became limp and she let him fall to the floor, stepping over him towards Courtney. Cameron held her hand out and pulled Courtney to her feet.

Courtney said nothing but launched herself at Cameron, wrapping her arms around her waist and burying her face into Cameron's shoulder. Sobs wracked her body and she shook all over in shock and cried loudly, her voice muffled by Cameron's T-shirt, becoming stained by Courtney's streaming tears.

Cameron thought she understood what Courtney felt, having gone through the same thing herself before being rescued by John. She stood rigid, unmoving, and let Courtney cry before slowly, awkwardly, closing her arms behind Courtney's back and pulling her into a hug like she'd done to comfort John when he needed it, or when she did.

They stood in place, unmoving, for a little over a minute before Cameron pulled back. "We have to go." More than that, she  _wanted_  to go; not only to search for John but simply to get away from this place. She'd lead Courtney out of the mine to safety and come back alone to kill Chris McGinty later. She picked up her SCAR-H, took the webbing and ammunition taken from her by Bates, fished in his pockets for the keys to the Topkick, and took Bate's rifle and his sidearm; slinging the former over her shoulder and stuffing the latter into the waistband of her cargo trousers.

Courtney still said nothing, traumatised and stunned into silence by her ordeal, and took the gun after she tightened her belt. Bates had managed to undo it and unbuckle her jeans but hadn't gotten as far as removing her trousers before Cameron had killed him. All she could think was that if Cameron had been just a minute later...

"Let's go," Cameron said, leading the way out of the room and cutting off her train of thought. She lead Courtney out into the empty tunnel and back towards the dining room where McGinty's men had all gorged themselves before. A few of the civilians hovered around, picking the few remaining scraps that they could. They stared at the two girls as they passed but remained silent. Their packs still rested against the wall and Cameron quickly slung hers over her shoulder. Courtney did the same without saying a word; she was as silent as when they'd first met and had stalked their way through the streets of Cactus Springs. Cameron knew it was shock; she wouldn't say anything for a while. She didn't need to speak, just to do as Cameron said.

They passed through the dining area and into the main chamber where all the other tunnel rats lived. Cameron recognised one woman as the mother with three they'd seen on the way in; she sat with her two older children whilst the baby was on her lap. The two older ones ate small platefuls of rice and vegetables and looked up at Cameron and Courtney strangely. Cameron knew what was going on in the mine now and thought it likely the mother had to give herself to the men to ensure her children were well fed. John had told her that Sarah had acted similarly in the past; becoming involved with men who could teach her how to fight, so she in turn could teach him.

"Where are you going?" the woman asked, standing up. "We're not allowed to leave; it's not safe out there."

"It's not safe here," Cameron replied. "You should go."

"I want to, believe me. This is no place to bring up kids, but it's that or the surface, waiting for the machines to come."

"I'd take my chances with the machines," Courtney muttered, still shaking slightly. She gazed out into space; a thousand-yard-stare, still in shock. Cameron thought it good that she'd said something; she wasn't completely catatonic.

"And go where?" The woman asked. "I know it's bad, but it's a small price to pay to keep my kids safe from the machines. Connor protects us."

"He doesn't protect you," Cameron said. She didn't like how people thought the fraud she'd left for dead in the other room was John; they were nothing alike and his deceit would harm John later. She felt the urge to protect his reputation as well as his life. "And he's not John Connor; he's a liar."

"How can you know that? He keeps us safe; he fights the machines," the woman argued as other civilians in the room approached and listened intently to the discussion. Cameron heard the hushed murmurs and conversations starting among the civilian population of the mine; her words sowing seeds of doubt among them.

"He doesn't," Cameron countered. "What's your name?" She asked.

"Kerry. You?"

"Cameron," she replied. She didn't think to introduce Courtney. "The man you call John Connor is called Chris McGinty."

"How'd you know all this?" Another woman asked.

"I know John Connor," Cameron answered. "That's not him," she pointed down the tunnel to where McGinty lay unconscious and battered.

"What difference does it make?" Kerry asked. "They won't let us leave; they'll kill us if we try."

"Kill him first," Cameron pulled out Bates' pistol and passed it grip-first to Kerry, who held it awkwardly in both hands, even more unfamiliar than Courtney had been when holding her rifle. She pulled the M4 carbine off her back and handed it to another tunnel rat.

She'd planned to put Courtney somewhere safe and then return to kill McGinty, but now she didn't have to. The guerrillas were all busy with the women from dinner; they could leave unnoticed and continue searching for John. Returning to kill McGinty, in her still-damaged condition, was a risk she didn't have to take; the civilians had already started to question 'John Connor' and there was a seventy percent chance that what she'd told Kerry would create open unrest in the tunnels within days.

She turned away from the crowding civilian women and led Courtney down the tunnel and towards the elevator. They rode it all the way up without a word passing between them as they reached the top and marched through the darkened tunnel up to the surface. Cameron neutralised the guards outside the entrance with a few well placed kicks to their faces and groins, collected their weapons, and led Courtney to the black Topkick they'd used to get to the mine.

Cameron sat behind the wheel and drove whilst Courtney took shotgun. They made their way over the rocky, uneven desert terrain, avoiding the dirt road they'd driven in on from Carson City. Cameron had no intention of returning there; she didn't know how many more of McGinty's men were still in the city; he could still have patrols out there and she'd prefer to not have to deal with them.

"That wasn't John?" Courtney finally spoke up after miles of sitting in silence as Cameron drove.

"That wasn't John," Cameron confirmed sadly. She'd wanted to find him, more than anything. She knew she'd become single-minded when she thought that she was close to finding John, and had ignored things she otherwise would have taken notice of. That wasn't like her, she knew. Not normally. Machines didn't make mistakes, but she had. What did that make her?

"Who was he, then?" Courtney asked, staring out the windscreen into the desert hills in the distance.

"A liar."

"You killed Bates when he tried to..." she couldn't even bring herself to say it, what he'd almost done had scarred her deeply; she'd tried to fight back but she couldn't; she was too weak, too useless. "Why?" Did she only come back to help her because she'd not found who she was looking for? If it had really been John Connor, the real one, would Cameron have just left her to Bates' mercy?

"It happened to me, once," Cameron could recall when Jackson and Wright had cornered her in an empty corridor and did the same to her, as vividly as when it had actually happened. She'd been confused and very upset by the ordeal, and the memory was still unpleasant, made no easier by the fact that she could remember it perfectly. "John saved me."

"Like you did me," Courtney nodded, understanding. She wasn't happy that Cameron had abandoned her to go looking for John, but she could tell Cameron was upset, and she'd come back to help her. She'd understood because it had happened to her, too.

Courtney leaned back in her seat and turned her head to the side, looking at Cameron through tear-filled eyes. "Thank you. For saving me, I mean." Cameron said nothing in reply but smiled slightly. Not many people said 'thank you' to her; it was nice to hear.

Cameron continued in silence as exhaustion and shock took their toll on Courtney and she drifted into an uneasy, fitful sleep, inevitably full of nightmares and things that would wake her in terror later on. Cameron had seen the same happen to John regularly. She glanced to the side at her blonde companion and saw her head was slumped against her shoulder; her neck would ache later if she remained in that position. Keeping one hand on the wheel, Cameron pushed Courtney's head gently until it was straight and leaning back against the headrest; a much better position.

Far off in the sky a single aircraft flew southwest towards California. Cameron stared at it intently as she drove and identified it as an Osprey troop transport. It had to be Skynet's; any human-piloted aircraft flying over Nevada now would have been shot down by Nellis' air defences. She also realised that if John was alive and free he'd have come for her; John didn't abandon the people he loved. If John was alive then he must have been captured by Skynet. In the future California had the highest concentration of machines in the United States; if Skynet was taking prisoners then that's where he would be. Now, like before, when Courtney had shown her the radio broadcast from Carson City, she had little else to go on. She just had to hope that this lead would prove better than the last.

 _Hope -_ she thought as she turned the Topkick west and drove through the desert towards California - was a human feeling, one she'd never experienced before. Machines didn't hope, but she'd heard saying once, that right now she thought fit her situation perfectly: sometimes hope was all you had.


	17. Hearts and Minds

John bowed his head down, kept his shoulders shrugged and shivered all over from the frigid air as he pushed his heavy, corpse-laden cart towards the furnaces. Winter was setting in and temperatures had dropped considerably; the normally tolerable California weather was growing harsher due to the untold tonnes of dust and rock particulates spread out in the atmosphere and blocking out much of the sunlight. Since the bombs had gone off there'd been no real warmth to speak of but it hadn't become a half-frozen wasteland like people had thought but it was on its way with the onset of winter; the days grew shorter and the nights colder. John never thought he'd have felt so cold in _California._

It wasn't freezing,  _yet,_  but he was still uncomfortably cold. All he had on under his DPM jacket was a thin cotton T-shirt; he'd not expected to stay out for long when he and Cameron had waited in ambush for Cromartie, and he'd  _certainly_ not expected to be captured by Skynet and thrown into hell.

John almost sighed in relief as he drew up his cart alongside the towering furnaces and bathed in the raging heat radiating out from the fires within. He pulled a body from the top of the cart and patted it down, running his hands over the torso, arms, and legs; searching for anything of value. He'd learned how to quickly check the bodies before casting them into the furnaces, ensuring the machines didn't notice either what he was doing or that he didn't take too long; if he did the machines would kill him simply for being too slow even if they didn't know he was doing.

It was also very tempting to take his time loading the bodies into the incinerators, simply because the furnaces were the warmest part of the camp. As John pushed the corpses into the fire he felt sensation started to return to his fingers, which helped massively with searching the other bodies; numb fingers could easily cause him to miss something small inside pockets. Alas, he couldn't spend all day by the furnaces; if he took longer than two or three minutes to empty his cart the machines' attentions would surely be attracted. He had to make do with the slight warmth and resolve to load up his cart at the gas chambers as fast as he could to get back to the warmth of the furnaces.

 _Beep-beep... beep-beep...beep-beep..._ John quickly switched off the alarm on his watch, silencing it as its shrill beep filled the air. Like clockwork, the camp lights switched off and immersed the entire camp into darkness, the raging fires of the furnaces simply winked out, abruptly cutting off the much appreciated heat.

 _This is ridiculous,_  he thought to himself as he saw the others behind him abandon their own loads and start to meander back up towards their living area. They couldn't keep going if the temperature kept dropping; it was just into November and they still had to cope with the winter months ahead while they worked.

John turned away to head back up towards their slightly-less-cold quarters when a sudden thought struck him. He turned back towards the bodies, just able to see them in the inky darkness of the night, and pulled one of them out onto the floor. The body was an elderly man, slightly larger than John, and wearing a dirty, worn woollen sweater. John tugged at the sleeves and pulled them off of the arms, barely even registering anymore that he was stripping what had once been a person. He'd pushed the revulsion and the guilt over Skynet's organised butchery in the camp and his own grave robbing of Skynet's innocent victims so far into the back of his mind that he simply saw them as potential treasure troves rather than people who'd once had lives and families, hopes, fears, and dreams.

After a minute of tricky manoeuvring he managed to pull the sweater off the corpse and unzipped his own jacket, pulling the thick sweater over his head before putting his jacket back on over it, already starting to feel the benefit. His head poked through the collar just in time to see the hulking form of a T-70 approaching him.  _Shit_ , John cursed himself. The machine had just caught him stealing the sweater. All thoughts of the cold left him to be replaced by dread. He'd been caught: he was dead. There was nothing he could do and nowhere to run or hide. He decided to try something he'd never considered before, something that had simply never occurred to him. He was dead anyway; what did he have to lose?

"It's freezing," he said to it, crossing his arms over his chest and shivering exaggeratedly for emphasis, not knowing if it could understand him or not. Cameron had never mentioned if they could understand speech; they seemed too simple to do anything other than kill but they'd surprised him by so far.

The machine made no move against him; the gun arm still pointed at the ground and the T-70 gave no reaction at all. It simply stood before him, its eight-foot height towering over him like a malicious sentinel, then pointed its hand towards the others retreating back to their shabby accommodation. He realised that it simply wanted him to return to the living area, so he took his cue and left, not wanting to do anything the machine would see as a form of resistance.

John and the other prisoners slowly walked back up towards their living area, when a trio of hulking T-70s blocked their path.

"What's going on?" someone spoke out among the murmurs that started. The machines had never stopped them from rest before. John realised the camp lights were still on after midnight; an unprecedented occurrence in the camp. The machines ran the camp like clockwork; hustling them out of bed at six a.m. sharp to begin work, and shutting the lights off at  _exactly_ midnight. A schedule was a schedule to the machines, and John couldn't work out for the life of him what was going on.

"John, look," Byrne tapped John on the shoulder and pointed back down towards the furnaces. Another pair of the bulky, blocky machines stomped across the camp grounds and escorted six weary, bedraggled prisoners, shuffling along in single file. John recognised the four men and two women from the nights in their building. They'd grown weaker and weaker over the last few days, slowing down the disposal process.

John watched silently with a grim look on his face, not showing any sign of acknowledging Byrne, as he stared at the macabre procession before him. The two machines stopped the six prisoners a few metres away from the furnaces, in full view of the other workers crowded in front of the three T-70s. The six prisoners stood in a row as the machines slowly plodded several metres back and slowly raised their weapons at them, an high-pitched mechanical whine started to emanate from within the machines as the mini-guns' electric motors activated.

One of the machines stepped forward and the others halted, holding their fire whilst the first one plodded forward and grabbed one of the prisoners – the largest man in the group – its massive three-fingered claw-hand clamped around his shoulder and armpit and pulled him away. John saw the look of sheer relief on his face at being taken out of the firing line, but then he saw the machine drag him towards the hospital entrance, and heard the prisoner's confused cries en route, begging to know where they were taking him. The two machines stood guard at the main entrance stood aside and allowed the prisoner and guard through and they disappeared from sight.

The remaining five prisoners huddled together, already forgetting their missing colleague. Some whimpered and others just bowed their heads in submissive acceptance; one woman shook her head in denial and silently mouthed something John couldn't make out at a distance but it looked like she was praying.

The silence of the night was shattered as the machines opened fire on the five prisoners; scores of rounds tore through their victims, so fast that the deafening reports blurred into one solid buzz, like an electric saw. None of the prisoners stood a chance as they were hosed with enough gunfire to shoot down a helicopter. The rounds pierced their bodies, tore through flesh, shattered bones, ripped organs apart and exploded out their backs in miniature fountains of gore; shredding them into little more than diced meat before they even hit the floor, red puddles pooled out from their bodies and started to soak into the soft mud beneath them.

John didn't even blink as one man's skull exploded in a shower of red, pink, and grey as several rounds split his head open like a watermelon. They might have screamed but any noise they made was drowned out by the low pitched growl of the rapid gunfire. Some in the crowd responded in horror, cries and screams emanated from those who'd not long arrived in the camp; murmurs from most of the workers, including Byrne and Slater as they whispered to each other.

Only John made no sound, no visible response at all to the execution. His mind was far from the firing squad before him; he was focused solely on the prisoner who'd been dragged into the hospital, remembering the bloodied, gore-covered skeletons that had rained down on him before. He couldn't help but think the other five who'd been gunned down were the lucky ones; whatever happened in there, it wasn't the end he'd wish for.

The machines behind them turned away and marched off; an audible  _thump_  accompanied each step as their heavy feet stamped onto the muddy ground outside the hospital. The remaining workforce sombrely ambled back to their quarters without much word passing between any of them.

The morale in the camp was always low; there wasn't much for them to smile about when they spent all day cremating the helpless victims of Skynet's systematic slaughter; mass murder on an almost industrial scale, and knowing they could be next if they didn't keep up the pace. John could see the normally sober mood plummeting further, and the looks on many of their faces were a mirror reflection of how he'd felt when he'd tried to kill himself weeks back.

Inside their living area the daily routine of their mealtime was repeated. John shovelled his broth into his mouth whilst watching the miserable faces of several who'd given up hope. The machines' public execution of those who'd been too tired to work had hit home to them all that there was no hope; that that was the fate they'd all eventually face. This was no way to carry on, he realised; helpless, hopeless, no purpose, and simply toiling every day, wondering if it would be your last. That was no way to live. They needed  _something;_ a reason, a purpose.

He slurped down the rest of the greasy, thin liquid, not even bothering to chew the small chunks of unknown meat that floated in the bowl and flowed down his throat, and marched straight out, quickly making his way to the generator room. Inside he saw Byrne and Slater tending to their stockpile, adding whatever items they'd managed to scavenge and making a mental list of what they had and what they needed. John fished into his pocket and pulled out a handful of 9mm rounds he'd found earlier in the day.

"Right, that makes... fifty-eight five-five-sixes, thirty-one nine-mils, nine shotgun shells, and seven of the .50 rounds for the Desert Eagle," Byrne said, counting up the rounds and adding them to their armoury. They only had the one gun, though; the Desert Eagle, but Byrne had told John they didn't need a gun for what he had planned.

"Where the hell did you get  _that?_ " Slater asked, pointing at John's newly acquired sweater. "You look like someone's Grandpa."

"It's cold," John shrugged. "One of the machines caught me taking it."

"Jaysus!" Byrne growled. "Why didn't the bastard shoot ye?"

"I don't think it cared," John replied, thinking back on it. As long as we don't stop working, try to fight them, or escape, they don't really care what we do."

"Ye sure about that?" Byrne asked. It made sense but he didn't want to be the one to test it out with his life.

"I think so," John said uncertainly. The T-70s were simple machines; little more than a gun with arms and legs attached, but there was a difference between being caught taking a sweater and being caught with ammunition, and John didn't much fancy being the one to find out if the machines would make that distinction.

He pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniels, the cigarettes that Slater had taken, several chocolate bars and MRE ration packs, and placed them into one of several empty boxes they'd found -mostly containing maintenance-related paperwork. Several captured soldiers had still had rations on them, which they'd swiftly liberated prior to loading the bodies into the furnace. Several times he, Byrne, and Slater had forgone their meat broth and instead treated themselves to beef stew, chicken and noodles, and John's new personal favourite; chicken fajita. Slater had called them 'Meals Rejected by Ethiopians', but to John, after a lifetime of his mom's cooking and three months of eating greasy meat broths, they were nothing less than a delicacy.

They'd slept in the generator room those nights, something they'd done more and more as they worked on plans and thought through the logistics for each idea. It was John's plan as a whole but they were the practical experts.

"Where are you taking those?" Slater asked, watching as John put all their scavenged MREs, chocolate, candy, cigarettes, and the Jack Daniels bottle into a small box and carried it out to the door.

"They need us," John gestured to the other prisoners in the hut outside. "They need...  _something_  to keep them going."

"So yer gonna blow our whole op just to give them a boost?" Byrne said. Yeah, the other prisoners needed something; they all did. But he didn't see why they should risk everything they've worked for just to make their lives a little better in the short term.

"No," John shook his head. " _We_  need  _them_ , too."

"How'd you mean?" Slater asked. He, like Byrne, didn't see how they needed the others; most of them had already given up and were simply ambling along, waiting for that bullet –or thirty – with their name on it to take them when they faltered. Many of them, like those in the other half of the camp, had already resigned themselves to little more than dead men walking.

"It's not enough," John replied, pointing at the stash of rounds Byrne had counted up. "A couple dozen bullets, some shotgun shells, lighters... it's not enough. We can't do this alone."

"You want to let them in on it," Slater said, realising what John meant. "You sure about that, can we trust them?" All it'd take was one of them to get the idea their lives might be made easier if they exposed their operation to the machines, and they'd be screwed.

"How many people die every day in the gas chambers?" John asked.

Both Byrne and Slater knew roughly how many; they didn't need to do the math to work it out. Hundreds died every day, to be replaced by hundreds more flown in on the unmanned Ospreys that flew in and dropped off prisoners to meet the same fate as those that came before them. All three of them had wondered how long the streaming intake of people would last, and how bad the state of the outside world must be if the machines were winning so much that they were taking prisoners en masse like this.

Were they the only prisoner camp, Slater wondered, or were there more out there doing the same thing? He'd thought that that John Connor on the airwaves must have been overrated, for the machines to be clearly winning so easily that they were running out of room for the prisoners; the condemned section of the camp had long been filled to the brim, the machines cramming more and more victims into the gas chambers to compensate for the growing numbers they took in every day.

"And how many of those do  _we_  actually search?" John said.

"I get ye," Byrne replied. "Yer thinking that the more of us scavenging, the more stuff we'll get." They'd managed to acquire a fair amount of useful items so far, but chances were they'd missed a hell of a lot more stuff because it was only the three of them searching.

John said nothing but simply nodded in reply and carried the box to the door, pausing to take two of their lighters and a stack of papers from a shelf on the wall. Slater opened it for him, switched the light off, and went out first. He swivelled his head left and right, checking for any machines nearby; they often patrolled the perimeter fence and he didn't want the tin cans to catch them sneaking around carrying a box they might deem as a threat.

He stepped outside and made a sweep to clear the area, and froze in his tracks as he looked out to his right, facing the fence.

"Back!" he hissed. "Wait." One of the machines stood at the perimeter fence, the bodies of the six men and women they'd executed piled in a heap at its feet. The T-70 stepped on the chest of a woman and pinned it to the ground, then reached down with its hand and grabbed her by the head, and twisted and pulled. Slater stared at the obscene spectacle with morbid fascination and grimaced at the ensuing wet snap and the tearing of flesh, bone, and tendon as the woman's head was wrenched from the body.

"Machine," he whispered softly. "It just tore a woman's head off." He stared on as John and Byrne peeked out and checked it out for themselves; the T-70 left the body on the ground like discarded trash and turned to face the fence, reached up and stuck the head on top of a metal strut; another head to add to the collection of morbid and obscene ornaments that decorated the camp perimeter to deter would-be escapists or insurrectionists. It did nothing, however, to deter John, Byrne, and Slater.

Slater waited until the machine was busy decapitating the second body before he signalled John and Byrne to follow him. John followed quickly and silently, carrying the box, whilst Byrne paused to make sure the door didn't make a sound as it closed, holding the handle down and pulling the door into the frame before releasing it quietly and dashing across the compound.

They reached the miserable shed that was the living area without attracting any attention from the machines, and slid inside quietly into the darkened room where everyone else was laid out and trying to sleep.

John could see the same problems still plagued the prisoners' quarters; too many people and not enough blankets, pillows, or mattresses; most were still awake, shaking with cold and gazing at nothing with blank, dead, hopeless eyes. He saw Simon and Guy both had a mattress, pillow, and blanket each, unsurprisingly. They'd not tried to push into the queue for second helpings of broth since John had put Simon in his place, but they were always at the front of the line, so whilst everyone else was getting theirs they'd make sure they got their own bedding. Under Byrne's advice John hadn't interfered again; they didn't want to make any enemies for themselves in the camp; they worried enough about the machines, let alone watching their backs for someone to stick a spanner into their works.

John marched up to the now-empty broth barrel and placed the papers inside. He snapped one of the disposable lighters in half and sprinkled the fluid inside over the papers, then lit the second one and held it into the barrel until the stack caught alight and started to burn. Within minutes the fire grew and the glow from the top of the barrel started to warm the air inside their pitiful accommodation, causing several slumbering bodies to stir.

"What're you doing?" one prisoner asked as he uncurled himself from his foetal-like position in the corner of the room.

"Getting comfy," John answered as Byrne and Slater came and sat by him on the floor. John pulled a chocolate bar from the box and tossed it to the prisoner, who looked at it suspiciously for a moment before taking it.

"What's this for?" he asked. "I don't have to... you know... do I?" he pushed the bar away from him, afraid to open it for fear of what John might want in return for it.

"You've seen too many prison movies," Slater replied.  _"He_  might ask you to pick up the soap sometime," he nodded at Byrne, "but we're alright."

"Piss off," Byrne growled, pulling a packet of hard candy out of John's box and opening it, shaking a few pieces into his own hand before tapping another rousing figure next to him on the shoulder and handing the packet to him. "Pass it around," he told him after he'd taken a few pieces.

Gradually, most of the prisoners started to wake up, roused by the growing heat of the fire in the barrel and intrigued by what was going on. John started to hand out several of the MRE rations, telling them to share it out.

Simon and Guy finally awoke and took an interest in what was going on around them. Guy sauntered over towards John and knelt down to take a pair of MRE packs out, but paused as John shot out a hand and grabbed his wrist.

 _"Share it,"_  John said sternly, taking the second one from him and gesturing for him to go back with Simon. Byrne and Slater looked at Guy with a glance that spelt out they'd get stuck in if he tried anything again. Guy glared at John and grumbled something he couldn't make out, and took the packet back to his mattress next to Simon's, and the pair of them tore the meal open and started to dig in with their spoons without speaking to anyone.

"What's the catch?" Someone asked.

"No catch," John said as he took a few spoonfuls of cold macaroni cheese from his sachet and passed it onto someone else. "Just making things more comfortable." To emphasize his point he pulled out the Jack Daniels bottle, unscrewed it, and handed it to the man next to him who'd first awoken when he'd lit the fire. He took a mouthful of the strong alcohol and sighed contentedly.

"Liquid gold!" he remarked, then took John's cue and handed it over to the next person.

"That's all there is, so share it around," John told them all. "What's your name?" he asked the guy next to him.

"Jim," he replied.

For the next several minutes the wretched workers of Century Work Camp forgot their miserable existences, ate, drank, and talked. Several lit up the cigarettes John had brought and Slater passed around, lighting one up for himself and savouring the taste of the smoke. The smell wasn't to John's taste but at least it helped to cover the odour of so many unwashed bodies crammed into one place. For many, this was the first real conversation they'd had since arriving; working too long and hard during the day to talk and being too tired, hungry, cold and miserable at night to bother.

John got several names and stories from the people they spoke to: Jim had been a schoolteacher from Van Nuys , a woman called Natalie had managed a clothing store in San Diego before Judgement Day, had hidden in the ruins of the city and been captured a month or so after John had arrived. They started to all talk, and see each other as people, rather than fellow lambs to the slaughter.

"What're you after, John?" Simon pointed at him demandingly, silencing the myriad conversations taking place through the room and dampening the mood. "You and your boys spend half the nights out there, you haven't said a word to anyone, and now you just show up here with a box of goodies and start playing nice? Nothing's for free; what're you after?"

"Where'd you get it all from, anyway?" Natalie asked; the seeds of doubt already sown in her mind by Simon's comment.

"From the bodies we've been cremating," John replied, ignoring the resulting murmurs and hushed voices as they all took in what he said.

"Byrne, and Slater, and I have been taking anything useful we find of the bodies we're pushing around. That's where this all came from." John looked around and took a nervous breath. He'd convinced Byrne and Slater fairly quickly; they were soldiers and they could overlook the distastefulness of their actions and see it as nothing more than a means of escape.

"Simon's right; we do want something in return."

"Surprise surprise," Simon rolled his eyes and sneered. He didn't know what the kid was up to, but it was clear he was trying to buy people's loyalty with a few snacks. He and Guy would eat his food alright, but whatever John was up to, he could count them out. The kid would get them all killed.

"We want yer help," Byrne said.

"The three of us have been doing this for weeks and we've got all this and more, but it's not enough," Slater added.

"Why?" The prisoner who'd introduced herself earlier as Amy asked. "Not enough for what?"

"Not enough to escape," John answered.

"Bullshit!" someone laughed bitterly. "There's no escape from here; you're dreaming."

"Everyone who's tried didn't make it very far," Jim agreed. Attempted escapes were a common occurrence; almost all of them were from those who'd just arrived, and every single one of them resulted in the would-be escaper being gunned down by the machines and their decapitated heads stuck on top of the fence. John didn't know how the machines knew it would be a deterrent, but they knew somehow. It deterred those already in the camp from trying, just as much as watching the fates of those who tried.

"They were stupid," John said seriously, all mirth and warmth gone from the conversation. "My first day here, someone tried to run; he got three feet up the fence before he was killed. Those fences are ten feet high and topped with another two feet of razor wire; we can't go over them and there's no entrance in or out of the camp." That was one of their first concerns when he, Byrne, and Slater had started planning. There was no gate, no way in or out; the prisoners were all flown in via Ospreys that landed in the hospital grounds.

"We can't just make a run for it; we need to be smarter than that."

" _What,_ then?" someone asked.

"You gonna tunnel out of here with spoons, maybe?"

"We scavenge," John said. "Bullets, lighters, knives, anything else that looks useful, and any food we find."

"What use are bullets with no guns?" Guy asked.

"Ye ever heard of the Gunpowder Plot?" Byrne asked. "Fella named Guy Fawkes in 1605 tried to blow up British Parliament with barrels of gunpowder. Nearly worked, too; we don't need guns, just the gunpowder in the bullets and anything else we can find that goes  _bang_ ; we get enough of it we can blast our way out of here and blow these metal fuckers to kingdom come."

Part of John winced at the word 'metal,' even though he never thought of Cameron as such – she was a machine, yes, but she was so much more than that; she'd grown so much and become more than Skynet had ever intended. Would they – Byrne, Slater, and those that came with them - to accept Cameron if he could find her and bring her back? Or would they forever despise her like Perry and so many others? What would they think if they saw him break down and cry over her remains, should she truly be dead?

He shook his head; he couldn't think like that now; he'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it. For now he had to worry about getting out in the first place. And for that, he needed their help; he needed to win their hearts and minds or they'd never escape.

Cameron had told him before he'd been at Century from 2015 to 2021; no way was he going to spend six years slaving away; they could all be dead by then. He didn't know what the camp was like in the future, but in this one he couldn't imagine surviving for  _one_  year, let alone six. They needed help.

"They use infrared to target us," John added, remembering Cameron's lectures on the machines. "They lock on to our heat signatures; if we can set off enough bombs, start enough fires, they won't be able to track us.

"That's it," John said simply. "We steal anything worth taking, hide it away, and make bombs. Byrne's an explosives expert; he can make a bomb out of almost anything. We'll," John indicated at himself, Byrne, and Slater, "make the bombs; we need everyone else to search every body they can for anything useful." He looked around the room at their faces; a mixture of incredulity, disbelief, cynicism – mostly from Guy and Simon and a handful of others – and also a few glimmers of hope. "Who's in?"

Several nodded their assent almost instantly. Others started hushed conversations with each other, debating whether or not to join John's plan. John didn't see the argument; they either carried on the way they were and slaved away until they became too weak to work, or they actually did something to get themselves out. He guessed some preferred the devil they knew, not wanting to tempt an even worse fate than they already had.

"What if the machines catch us?" Jim asked.

"Then you're fuc-"

"They don't care," John answered reassuringly, cutting off Guy before he could put them off "One of them caught me putting this on," he pulled at his sweater for emphasis. "It didn't care in the least. Be quick and careful, and you'll be alright."

"So who's in?" Slater asked. "I want to see hands."

Eventually, forty out of the sixty or so prisoners held their hands up; not everyone, like John had hoped, but still a lot more than just the three of them. It'd do, he supposed. He couldn't help but notice that Simon and Guy were among those who'd chosen not to take part. They didn't want any part in his plan and he wondered if they had their own in the works; he couldn't see them simply allowing themselves to be worked to death; they were too strong-willed for that. It was a shame, he thought, that they'd refused.

John took a few minutes to show them how to search a body; Byrne laid out on the ground whilst John displayed how to quickly but discreetly check for anything useful, emphasising any and all pockets, the backs of jeans – in case of another rare case of someone carrying a gun, and if they found any soldiers, to take their belt kit and vests and strap it on themselves instead of carrying it. He had Jim pat down Byrne, showing him how to quickly but thoroughly search a body. He patted down his breast pockets, checked the shoulders, armpits, stomach, thighs and buttocks.

"Ye could at least buy me dinner, first," Byrne said when Jim's hand brushed over his crotch, eliciting a few chuckles from the audience.

"What do we do with all the stuff when we get it?" Someone asked.

"Keep it on you until night, then we'll take it," John replied. "We should all get some sleep now or we'll be too tired in the morning." Everyone knew how that felt; it was bad enough being worked half to death every day, but missing out on the little sleep they did get made it all the worse; given how short their rest periods were it was damn near impossible to recover from a sleepless night in the camp. John had had a few since arriving, and he'd never felt so drained in a long,  _long_ time.

* * *

 _John awoke with a jolt as his bedroom door slammed open with an almighty_ crack. _He threw his covers off of him and leapt behind the bed, waiting for the inevitable crack of gunfire overhead._ Shit! _He thought; Cromartie must have found them, and he had nothing to defend himself with. Not that it'd matter; the only thing they had to fight him off with was Cameron. He couldn't escape out the window; he was dead._

_After a few seconds hidden behind his bed he realised he wasn't being attacked; there was no gunfire and Cromartie or any other machine wouldn't have waited to move in and snap his neck like a twig._

_John sheepishly got up from behind the bed and saw Cameron stood in the doorway; wearing a small T-shirt and tiny shorts that left little to the imagination, running shoes, and a faint expression of bemusement on her face._

_"Jeez, Cameron!" John groaned. "I thought you were gonna kill me."_

_"I'd never hurt you John," Cameron replied. John's lack of trust concerned her; she wanted him to trust her. She wanted to be his friend, which meant she wanted him to trust her._

_"No! Not_ you,  _you," he hurriedly corrected himself. "I thought you were Cromartie for a second."_

_"The bed's not a good place to hide; if I were Cromartie, you'd be dead."_

_"What's going on?" John asked, unable to stop himself staring at her in her revealing attire; her yellow T-shirt was tiny, showed off her perfect curves and stopped halfway down her navel. Her shorts were more like hot pants; his boxers covered more than those. He found himself imagining her underneath those skimpy garments; his imagination started to run wild and he found himself stirring below._

_He suddenly realised in horror that he'd gone to bed naked that night, and Cameron could see his reaction to her now._

_"Jesus, Cameron!" He snapped, turning red in the face with embarrassment and angry at himself for allowing those kind of thoughts into his head; he knew she was more than just a machine but still, that kind of thinking was futile. It'd be impossible, and would only be a huge mess in the long run. "You not heard of privacy?" He asked as he grabbed a pillow and held in protectively in front of his crotch, trying futilely to hide his reaction to the sight of her dressed like that._

_"I've seen you naked before. Many times," Cameron replied simply, stepping closer and staring at his body intently, making John feel more uncomfortable than he'd ever been in his life; especially when she stared at him like a hawk watching a particularly tasty mouse._

_She crossed the room and reached out with one hand, gently running a finger across his chest and making him grimace as all the blood in his body rushed south towards his groin. What did she want? She wasn't going to try and seduce him again, was she? He had to admit - wearing what she was - he'd be lying if he said he wouldn't be tempted._

_"No scars," she said simply. In the future he had many scars from numerous combat injuries; some he'd never spoken of. She gently poked where Future John had had an entry wound on his stomach; the exit wound was higher up and the size of a silver dollar. He had burns on his chest, neck, and the left side of his face, and several scars from shrapnel wounds. She'd always been curious about his scars and how he'd gotten them. Would this John carry the same scars one day?_

_She knew he was aroused by her, too; she didn't need to scan him to know that. Why he hadn't accepted her in the shower before, she didn't know. John was complicated._

_"You saw me like this in the future?" John asked._

_"Naked... yes." She'd seen Future John naked many times when she'd treated his wounds. He also washed and bathed in front of her, not caring about privacy and knowing that machines were not bothered by nudity the same way that humans were._

_What the hell did that mean? John thought. Did her and Future-Him... No! Couldn't be; Future Him was smarter than that, surely. Still, for some reason he hated the idea of his future self being with her, touching her... He shook his head to try and clear those ideas out of his head once more; he'd learned long ago that it wasn't a healthy train of thought._

_"What do you want?" He asked more harshly than he'd intended._

_"You're weak," Cameron replied._

_"What?" John asked, confused and a little annoyed by her comment. What the hell did she mean?_

_"You need training; you're weak. I'm going to train you." Cameron turned around and marched out, leaving the door open and John stood naked in his room, holding a pillow to cover himself and feeling more embarrassed than he could describe._

_He quickly pulled on some clothes; a pair of shorts and a baggy T-shirt, and went downstairs to find Cameron waiting for him outside at the front of the house. He couldn't help but grin a little at the sight of her still; if he was going to have to work out, at least his training partner would be nice to look at; he shouldn't think like that, he knew, but it would be a welcome distraction, at least. Maybe it wouldn't be all that bad._

_"What're we doing, then?" John asked._

_"Run. Five miles," Cameron answered._

_"_ Five miles?"  _John coughed. He couldn't do that; he'd not done any real running since Presidio Alto over a year and a half ago. They'd never had money to join a gym and his mom had always said running outside made him a target._

_"Future-You could run ten miles," she replied. "We'll go slow," she smiled sweetly at him and then broke into a quick run down the path towards the road. John set off after her and quickly caught up, though Cameron accelerated even further until John was forced into a flat out run to keep up with her. They ran out together, keeping to minor roads until they moved onto a series of fields and started to go cross-country._

_The going got tougher as they ran through fields of unkempt long grass and uneven ground, John huffing and panting as he struggled to keep up with Cameron. He'd gotten lazy with training lately and now he was paying the price for it. His legs ached and his feet were on fire; his body wanted to give up but his brain refused to; she'd called him weak, had compared him to his future self and found him lacking. He wasn't going to quit; he'd keep going until he fell apart if he had to._

_Cameron suddenly stopped at the edge of a copse of trees and turned around to face John as he slowed to a halt._

_"That's five miles," she said._

_"How... how'd I do?" John asked, panting and breathing heavily, his mouth dry and acrid like a desert. He wished he'd brought a bottle of water along now, too._

_"Badly," Cameron replied. Future John could run much faster than he did, despite the age difference. John would need considerable training to improve. She considered pretending to go bad to motivate him to run faster but decided against it; John might lose trust in her, and Cameron didn't want John to act like he'd done before; he'd improved since Riley had died and they'd moved away from their old house. She didn't want him to regress._

_"Let me guess; future-me's better, right?" John rolled his eyes. One thing he hated was being compared to his future self; who was so much smarter, so much better than he was. He never made a mistake, he never cried, or complained, of course. He always knew what to do and always just got the job done. Future-John was everything he wasn't._

_"Its five miles back home," Cameron said._

_"I thought you weren't built to be cruel," John gasped as he turned around and grudgingly started back the way they'd came, his feet burning and his legs aching beneath him. She was enjoying this, he thought; doing it on purpose as some kind of punishment for how he'd treated her these past few weeks. Would she really do that? He wondered; he'd upset her, he knew. Was this some kind of revenge for how he'd acted towards her?_ Would she really stoop to petty revenge?  _He thought. And why did she keep comparing him to Future-him? From the way she'd stared at him naked earlier and then commented on his future self, he couldn't help but wonder what his relationship with her in the future was. She seemed to view his future self in a much higher regard than him; the way she spoke about him sometimes it was like she admired him. Or more, even. Was that possible? He wondered._

_They got back to the house faster than he'd imagined; his ponderings about Cameron had overshadowed everything else, even the burning sensation in his legs and the urge to stop and throw up. All John wanted to do now was crash out on the sofa for the rest of the day; he'd never been so exhausted before in his life. Even his mom hadn't pushed him that hard before._

_"We'll run again tomorrow," Cameron said. "You need improvement, John. In the future, you-"_

"Don't  _compare me to Future-Me," John snapped. "I_ hate _it when you and Derek do that."_

_Cameron sat down on the sofa, grabbed the remote, and switched the TV on to the news, checking for anything relevant that might affect them. John hadn't understood; he didn't know what she was trying to do. John was insecure, she realised. She'd have to be careful what she said to him in future. She'd been truthful when she'd written in the note, that she liked having John as a friend; she didn't want him to push her away again._

_"If you don't train you won't live to become Future-You," she said simply._

_Had he upset her? He wondered. Cameron's words rang clear as a bell in his mind and John realised_ exactly _why she'd pushed him so hard; it wasn't out of some petty revenge or anything like that. He should have known better; she was still a Terminator at her core and she wouldn't understand nor care about petty revenge. No; she'd pushed him hard for his benefit, to help him. Everything she did was for him, and he was just starting to realise that. She compared him to his future self so he'd have something to work towards, maybe even exceed; and if she didn't, then as she said, he might not live to become what he was supposed to be. He realised he still knew so little about her, and that he had a long way to go before he was ready to be 'John Connor'._

_"Cameron..." he flopped down beside her on the sofa and put his feet up on the table. Strangely, it didn't feel weird; it actually felt nice, comfortable, sitting so close to her. He felt none of the awkwardness that he'd felt earlier in his room. He placed his hand over hers and squeezed gently, turning to face her. "Thank you," he said sincerely, leaning back and relaxing for the first time in a long time. "I mean it."_

_Cameron turned towards John and smiled. The expression was conscious and deliberate but the sentiment behind it was still genuine; nobody had ever said 'thank you' to her before; it was... nice._

_John couldn't help but grin back at the slight smile she gave in response, the way her eyes lit up ever so slightly. She wasn't faking it; she didn't have to pretend around him and she knew that. To John Connor it was another sign that she was more than just a machine, and it was worth more than gold._


	18. Gunpowder Plot

John picked the body out of the cart and dropped to his knees on the ground, the impact of the corpse and his own body created a dull wet thud on the soaked earth beneath him. The morning after he'd unveiled his plot to the slave population of Century Work Camp, the heavens opened up and descended upon ruined apocalypse of the hell-on-earth beneath, soaking him and everyone else in the camp from head to toe in rain that was as constant and unyielding as the machines' campaign to exterminate the human race.

To the untrained observer, John merely slipped on the wet earth and dropped his load; a combination of increasingly slippery terrain and the all encompassing fatigue felt in common by every worker in the camp. The untrained observer would have missed John's hands darting into the corpse's jeans pockets as he hoisted the body back up.

"Gotcha," John grinned as he closed his fingers around the likely looking thin, long bulge in the pocket and pulled out a pistol magazine. From another pocket he extracted a lighter, a small pack of cigarettes – probably half full, if that – and a packet of chewing gum. John had absolutely no clue what the hell people were thinking with some of the stuff he'd seen on the bodies; why some thought they could get by on cigarettes, gum, alcohol, and other crap was beyond him.

One of the first lessons he'd learnt in the jungles of South America, before he'd ever even been taught to hold – much less fire – a gun, was survival; how to live off the land and survive on the bare essentials. John wasn't surprised that so many ended up being caught and slaughtered like cattle when they didn't even know how to survive. Many of them had already made a harsh adversary for themselves in the form of their own ignorance; no less dangerous than and just as merciless as the machines themselves.

John pocketed the items, sliding them into his right thigh-pocket on his combat trousers. He barely even registered how wet and miserably cold it was. His body wasn't too bad, at least; the DPM jacket was largely water-resistant, and the scavenged woollen sweater underneath retained his body heat even when soaked through.

He hoisted the body up into the furnace and nodded at Slater as he passed by with his empty cart. Slater tilted his head to the side and backwards, drawing John's attention to Byrne behind him, also pushing his own empty cart back to the gas chambers.

John looked at Byrne but he wasn't holding anything – just the cart. It took him a moment to realise Slater wasn't indicating what Byrne was doing, but what he was  _wearing._ The Irish SAS demolitions expert had donned a combat vest over his jacket. How the hell he'd found it – and not been seen taking it – John had no clue. To top it all off Byrne strolled merrily past a T-70, only a few feet away, and offered the machine a wry grin as he passed it.

Byrne had just proven his earlier point, John realised; the machines truly didn't care as long as they were unarmed, maintained their workload, and didn't try to escape or fight them. John looked past Byrne and saw the security camera higher up on the hospital wall behind. He'd seen the cameras before, had known they were there, but now, as he stared into the glassy black maw of the surveillance device, John wondered exactly  _why_  the T-70s – so primitive, so stupid – were given the task of guarding them. Was something else watching them? He wondered. Were the cameras even operational, and if so, what was watching on the other end?

* * *

 _Dinnertime, once again,_  John rolled his eyes in disgust at the thought of the greasy meat broth. As before, the two-handed T-70 hauled a large barrel as it plodded towards them; the servos in its legs whining with each step it took. John watched its slow, methodical movements and wondered how so many people were caught by these things; they were built to withstand limited attacks from small arms but they vulnerable to sustained fire, were slow, cumbersome, and about as smart as an ant.

When he really thought about it, these walking tin cans only had two redeeming features: their mini-guns, which could cut people down in swathes; and the fact their vaguely humanoid designs allowed them to follow people into places that Skynet's other machines couldn't. The machine was the very definition of 'robot'; lacking any of Cameron's grace, complexity, or intelligence that John knew far outmatched his own or any other human's. Unlike his lover, these tin cans could never hope to achieve sentience; they were drones, little more than walking machine guns, without a single thought in their heads.

The prisoners entered the living area as they finished another gruelling, miserable day of toil. Though many of the faces were tired and weary, John could already see a distinct difference; the dead-man-walking, resigned, hopeless facade worn by many of the workers was gone. They hardly had a spring in their step, and none of them gave anything even close to a smile, but there was something – a spark of renewed life that hadn't been there before.

Several of the prisoners, on entry, reached into their pockets and dumped items into the box John had used to ferry the rations and liquor from the generator room two days before, then ambled along into the growing queue to await their 'food'. John didn't even bother to look inside the box; he could do that after he'd eaten.

The machine dumped the barrel onto the ground, resulting in some of the liquid inside sloshing around and spilling down the side and onto the ground.  _Even less for someone, now,_  John thought.

Typically of mealtimes, Simon and Guy pushed their way to the front of the crowd, using everyone's busying themselves with placing their scavenged items into the box, as well as their nervousness and immediate instinct to back away from the machines – even the one feeding them – to push their way forward. They had to make sure they got there first to fill their bowls, and also to secure bedding for themselves whilst everyone else ate. It was the same day after day, but it still didn't sit any easier with John. John, Byrne, and Slater got in line somewhere around the middle, when he heard commotion coming from the front of the queue as the machine turned around and marched away, indifferent to the humans' mealtime etiquette.

John peeked out of the queue to see what was going on. Several prisoners had overtaken Guy and Simon and were refusing to let the two larger men eat.

"Move it," Simon said.

"The longer it takes to eat, the less sleep we all get. Get it?"

"Doesn't matter," the prisoner who'd introduced himself as Jim the night before replied, backed up by three others who'd all volunteered to take part in John's scheme. "Get to the back," he nodded at the back of the line.

"We were here first," Guy insisted.

"Yeah, like every other night," someone else rolled their eyes and chipped in.

"John?" Jim called out.

John walked forward to the front of the line, unsure what they expected him to do about it; Guy and Simon were selfish assholes, but they had been there first, and they'd not gone back for second helpings since he'd intervened.

"What's going on?" John asked, looking at Simon and Guy, and then at Jim and his companions.

"You eat first," Jim replied, sweeping his hand out at the broth.

"No," John said. He didn't want any special treatment; he'd had a lifetime of that already. People died for him, people killed for him; in the future, from what he'd heard, people seemed to hero-worship him. He was just a regular guy; he still didn't see why he was supposed to be so special. He knew a bit more about the machines than most people, but only because he'd had the advantage of people coming back and passing on that knowledge. Anyone else with that same knowledge could have done the same, he thought.

"We got here first," Simon said, trying to shove Jim aside.

"You're eating last," Jim said, shoving Simon back. John wondered for a moment if another fight would break out, but more of the prisoners stepped in and outnumbered Simon and Guy further. Taking their cue, Simon sighed resignedly and walked to the back, knowing that aggravating them further would simply result in getting the shit beaten out of them. Neither Simon nor Guy wanted to risk being too injured to work the next day; it was what they were all afraid of.

"John, please. We insist," Jim once again motioned for John to take the first bowlful. Sighing, hating being made out to be special but knowing they weren't going to take no for an answer, he grabbed a bowl and dipped it into the lukewarm liquid, pulling it out and taking the bowl away as he turned from the barrel. He looked out for Byrne and Slater but couldn't see them.  _Must be in the generator room,_ he decided. He quickly slurped down the broth – not even bothering to use a spoon anymore - and placed the bowl on the ground. He picked up the box and marched out of the living area whilst the others queued up and each took their own share of what vaguely passed as food.

Even though the camp was dark, John peered out towards the hospital building that dominated one corner of the camp, making sure no machines were nearby, and quickly walked out, holding the box at his side, keeping his body between it and the hospital – namely the cameras mounted on the walls, in case they could see in the dark.

He made it undisturbed and unseen to the generator room and quietly let himself through the door, taking care to close it as silently as possible. He'd quickly learned that speed and silence were two of the most important factors in their slowly growing insurrection. He'd shown the others that what they were doing was possible as long as they were quick, quiet, and above all, discreet and patient.

Byrne and Slater were already inside and working on their growing stockpile. Byrne had taken the combat vest off and emptied its contents onto the floor in a neat pile.

"How'd you get that?" John asked.

"Same way as everything else," Byrne replied. "Always did have fast hands."

"Come again?" John asked.

"I was a right little bastard when I was a kid," Byrne explained. "Shoplifting, nicking cars... all the petty stuff, ye know. Well, ye probably wouldn't know; ye don't look much like a troublemaker to me."

"You'd be surprised." He'd been a little shit, himself; when his mom had been locked away and been told everything he'd grown up to believe was a lie, he'd rebelled. He'd had a criminal record since he was ten. Not that it ever mattered; he'd been legally dead since 1999.

 _"Sure,"_  Slater rolled his eyes. "You've got 'junior officer' stamped all over you, lad."

 _"Anyway,"_ Byrne continued as he pulled a rifle magazine out of one of the pouches on the vest. "When I was 17 I nicked a car, crashed it, and wound up in front of a judge. Almost went to prison but they went easy on me since I'd just been accepted into the Army – said it'd straighten me out and I'd have a bright future ahead of me if I fell in line. And here I am. "

"What about you?" John asked Slater. They'd never spoken to him about their pasts before; it was something people in the camp often wanted to forget; to forget that their past was gone and replaced by a hopeless future.

"Not a lot to tell, really. Graduated high school, Army recruiter gave me a leaflet one day... signed up the next."

John envied them both in a way. They'd had choices; they'd both chosen – of their own free will – to become soldiers. He'd already told Byrne before he was born to it, though the Irishman would never know just how literally he'd meant it.

"Changing the subject," Byrne slapped another rifle magazine onto the ground from the pouch and pushed out the rounds out one by one and sorted them into neat six neat rows of ten. "Why the hell did the guy who owned this surrender to the tin cans? He had sixty bloody rounds on him."

"Might have been surrounded," John suggested. "Or his gun jammed, or got damaged." He'd lost his rifle and ran out of all his ammunition fighting Cromartie before he'd been captured, but even if he'd been armed to the teeth he'd have still surrendered; he'd let himself get caught to keep the machines away from Cameron. He still cringed at the thought of Skynet getting hold of her; the AI would have torn her apart to find out what she was and how she worked. On top of the fact that Skynet's machine development would be fast forwarded by a decade or more; John simply couldn't stomach the idea of Cameron being taken apart to be used in some Skynet experiment. He could never have let that happen to Cameron.

* * *

_John struggled under the oppressive weight above him. Sweat poured down his ever-reddening face and the veins stuck out from his temples with the impossible strain bearing down on his body. His wrists, his arms, his chest and shoulders threatened to collapse; he really didn't know if he could take any more. His body begged him to stop, to just lie down and admit defeat, but he'd have none of it. Cameron stood above him passively, watching him like a hawk, but made no move whatsoever to help him. He knew she wouldn't, not unless she really had to step in, but he didn't want her to. Not yet. He had to prove it; to her, to himself, to Future Him, to everyone._

Now or never, John,  _he thought to himself as he braced his body for what he knew would hurt like hell._

_"Twenty!" He gasped sharply, pushing the barbell up with everything he had, heaving it upright until his arms were straight. He held the bar above him for several seconds, his arms trembling as he kept the heavy weight above and threatened to buckle and bring it all crashing back down upon him._

_Cameron stepped closer and grabbed the bar with one hand and started to lift it up to the cradle._

_"No!" John protested, gripping the bar firmly. "I'm not done."_

_"You reached your target," Cameron said flatly, still keeping her hand on the bar and holding it up. If he continued he risked hurting himself. He'd achieved his target – three sets of twenty reps, bench-pressing a hundred and twenty lbs – he needed to rest._

_"I want to break it," John replied, a cast iron look of determination set on his face and he pushed against Cameron, pushing the bar into position above his chest. Cameron recognised that look from both John and his future self and knew she'd not be able to dissuade him. All she could do was stand back and try to make sure he didn't injure himself._

_John groaned, heaved, and grunted in exertion as he managed to push the bar up twice more. The twenty-third rep proved too much for him; he started to lower the bar to his chest when he felt the last of his strength sapped and his elbows buckled. He instantly pushed the bar upwards as hard as he could, struggling to get it back up to the cradle as he realised Cameron was right. He forced the bar back up and slid it towards the cradle as fast as he could; in his rush to get the bar away he dropped it, catching his hand under the bar as it fell into place._

_John cried out in pain as the heavy bar crushed his hand into the cradle, trying to pull his hand away from under it, but it was trapped, wedged in place. Cameron was there in an instant and pulled the barbell away with ease, allowing John to slip his hand out from under it and sit back up, clutching it protectively to his chest._

_Cameron led John out of the garage and into the kitchen. She sat him down on a chair at the kitchen table and took a seat next to him._

_"Give me your hand," she said softly. John slowly held it out for her and she took his hand in both of hers, running her soft, smooth fingers delicately across the bones in the back of his hand and his fingers, inspecting it thoroughly. It had already started to swell up and despite her attempts to be as gentle as possible he still hissed and winced in pain. He didn't recoil or try to pull back from her touch, though._

_"You have a high pain threshold," she commented._

_Even through the pain, John was surprised how soft and delicate her touch was, and the irony that Cameron's gentleness with him was entirely antithetical to her design. He gasped sharply as she traced a finger over the back of his hand, where his thumb connected with the other bones._

_"It's not broken," she finally said after several moments of silent inspection._

_"Feels like it," John replied._

_"It's bruised."_

_Cameron stood up and went to the freezer, pulling out a bag of ice cubes. She then grabbed their well-used first aid kit from the top of a cupboard and sat back down next to John, opening it up and unrolling a white bandage. She took John's hand in hers and slowly wrapped the bandage around his hand. She was slow, careful, and methodical, as she tightly wrapped it around his hand, over and over, finally securing the bandage in place with a few strips of medical tape. Even without her detailed files on human anatomy and physiology, the Connors' household first-aid kit had been used enough times over the past few years that she'd have still known how to use it._

_When she was done she took the bag of ice and placed it firmly but gently over the back of his hand, then held it there and took placed her free palm against his, keeping a slight but constant pressure against his hand._

_"The ice will help," she said. "It will reduce the swelling."_

_"Thanks," John smiled at her._

_"Humans aren't very good at self repair," she said, returning his smile with a warm, genuine one of her own. This was the second time he'd thanked her, and she liked hearing it. She liked that he valued her. She'd have continued even if he'd spat and cursed at her, but it was nice that he didn't._

_"We're not very good at taking no for an answer, either, are we?" John quipped._ "Future-me _would have known when to quit, right?"_

_"No, Future-you is stubborn, as well. John Connor tends to learn things the hard way."_

_John wasn't sure entirely which John Connor she meant, but he thought she was talking about both of them. Was she saying he was becoming more like his future self? He wondered if and when she'd see him as the same man that he was in the future. He stopped thinking about it when he felt her gently squeeze his hand. He closed his hand around her one under his palm, and placed his free hand on top of her other one._

_"Is that your way of saying 'I told you so'?"_

_"No," she answered simply, the small smile on her face growing almost imperceptibly wider, her eyes meeting his as she spoke. "Future-you makes mistakes too. But you're learning quickly." Weeks ago, John would have recoiled from her touch. He'd have refused to let her help him in any way. He'd have avoided her, just as he did when he was with Riley. Sarah's death had set his development back, but now he was ahead of schedule._

_"I'm not the only one," John grinned back. He was amazed at how quickly she was learning; she'd grown a lot since 2007._

_Cameron took the ice off the back of his hand and inspected it. It was swelling slightly and she could already detect the faint purple bruising starting to appear under the skin. John hissed in pain as she touched the base of his thumb and he flinched on reflex, but didn't pull away from her. Cameron brought his hand up to her face and softly kissed the spot where his thumb met the rest of his hand, her lips just barely brushing against his skin._

_John stared at her, feeling himself turn red in the face, but he didn't pull away. "What was that?" he asked._

_"Kissing it better," Cameron replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I saw it on TV." She had no doubt that kissing an injury provided no medical benefit, but she'd learned that many of the strange human practices helped on a psychological level. She'd not been programmed with knowledge of human psychology, but she'd been interested in the subject and had researched it online at night. Anything she could do to help John._

_"Is there anything you wouldn't do for me?" John asked as Cameron put the ice back on his hand. This was definitely going far beyond just keeping him alive._ Does that mean she actually cares for me?

_"No," Cameron answered simply, curling her fingers around his._

_John couldn't help but smile; that single word had answered his question for him._

* * *

"Doesn't matter what happened, just means we get his stuff." John knew Slater had a point; sixty rounds meant – relatively – a lot of gunpowder; several times more than they'd ever managed to find in one day before. Another rare miracle granted to them and another sign that they needed the help of everyone in the camp; that without them they could miss a rare gem of a find such as the combat vest.

Byrne pulled out several other items from the combat vest; a few remaining items from a ration pack – the previous owner had either eaten most of it before he was captured or whilst he was awaiting execution – a few bits odds and ends, including mess tins, a plastic water canteen, half a dozen sugar sachets, an unopened can of Diet Coke, and, strangely, a small wash bag with a bar of soap and a cloth, as well as a razor and miniature can of shaving gel.

John put the wash kit to one side, deeming it as useless, but Byrne grabbed the bar of soap and put it next to the empty Jack Daniels bottle the other prisoners had finished off the other day.

"What're you gonna use that for?" John asked him.

"Just don't drop it in front of him," Slater said.

"Very funny," Byrne rolled his eyes and stuck his middle finger out at Slater. "Watch and learn." He grabbed the bar of soap and started crushing it into small pieces, then slowly popped the broken bits into the Jack Daniels bottle. He then took the sachets of sugar from the remaining rations in the pack and tore them open, pouring their contents into the bottle along with the remains of the soap bar.

Byrne then stood up and approached the generator's large, grey fuel tank. He'd been able to tell before that there was still some fuel left in it. Not a lot, by his reckoning, but some; and more than enough for their needs.

He'd inspected the generator thoroughly over the past weeks, checking the fuel tank for strength and durability, for anything they could scavenge off the machine itself that might look useful, and he'd also quickly located the valve to release the fuel from, although he'd not yet opened it for fear of wasting however much was in there. He wasn't sure but decided to err on the side of caution and assume there wasn't much. Anything more was a bonus.

He picked up the Jack Daniels bottle, opened the cap, and turned the valve ever so slowly to release a trickle of fuel. The clear brownish substance poured faster out of the tank as Byrne opened up the valve further, holding the bottle in place until the highly inflammable gasoline reached near the top, then screwing the cap on the end and vigorously shaking the gas/soap/sugar mixture.

"And the point of that was?" Slater asked as Byrne pulled out the washcloth and held up the bottle underneath the gap in the fuel tank, letting the gasoline fill the bottle to the top before he closed the tank off again. Byrne then screwed the cap on and vigorously shook the mixture inside.

"Molotov cocktail," Byrne replied.

"Why the soap and the sugar?" John asked. He'd learned how to make homemade explosives since he was a kid, but he'd never seen any with sugar or soap added to the mix.

"Homemade napalm," Byrne answered. "Light it like a normal Molotov, throw this baby at a tin can, and the sugar and soap makes it stick to whatever it touches."

"It blinds them," John said, starting to see Byrne's point. The machines used infrared to target threats; if they themselves were literally on fire – regardless of what damage it may or may not inflict – their targeting systems would be blinded.

"Where the hell did you learn that?" Slater asked. Byrne had served with him and his unit for two years on exchange from the SAS, and although the man had claimed to be able to be God's gift to demolitions, Slater hadn't fully believed it until now.

John, too, was very impressed. He'd been taught since the cradle how to make weapons; he'd made his first pipe bomb before he'd even learned to ride a bike. Any idiot could make a Molotov cocktail, but he'd never seen one made with homemade napalm before. Once again he was reminded that he'd chosen his allies well.

Byrne put the Molotov away in the corner of the room – where it couldn't get knocked over – and the three of them started work on taking bullets apart and pouring their contents into the two mess tins retrieved from one of the pouches on the combat vest. They worked constantly, Byrne and Slater chattering and bickering, and John mostly just listening in for the most part, until they'd taken apart all of the rounds they'd acquired, with the exception of the .50 AE rounds for the Desert Eagle, and the shotgun shells, which Byrne said he had other ideas for. The black powder from over a hundred rounds of varying calibre sat in one of the two mess tins; the second one held a pile of all the empty casings and the bullets themselves.

John took the two empty rifle magazines and started pouring the powder into one of them, pushing the follower down and to the side to let the powder drop to the bottom. He poured it in as carefully, as slowly as he could, to avoid spilling any on the ground. His hands shook slightly with concentration and fatigue; it would have been easier to pour faster but he didn't want to waste any, and didn't much fancy scooping it up off the floor.

When the first magazine was almost full of black power, John propped it against his knee and scooped a handful of shell casings and bullets into his hand and onto the floor. He fit four dead rounds back together and loaded them into the top of the magazine, condensing the powder inside. He fit a fifth round in before the whole thing was packed too tightly to load any more inside.

"There's another one," John said, placing the black powder-filled magazine on the floor. There wasn't enough yet to fill the second one up more than a third full, so they'd have to keep scavenging for more. Even with the extra rounds brought in by the other prisoners, it would take a while. It took a lot of rounds to produce enough black powder for even a small bomb. "Needs a fuse."

"Okay, so I know where  _I_ learned to make bombs," Byrne commented, picking up the magazine bomb and inspecting it. "But where the hell did _ye_ learn  _this?"_

"My mom," John said.

"Yer  _mum_ taught ye to make bombs?"

"The hot chick in the photo,  _she_  taught you that?" Slater added in disbelief.

"That's my mom," John reminded him through gritted teeth. "And yeah; she taught me everything I know."

"Must have had a fun childhood," Slater said.

 _'Fun'_ wasn't exactly how he would have described it. Apart from those three years with his foster parents, when he'd become the rebellious tearaway who'd stolen cash, vandalised, shoplifted, gotten into fights at school, and disappeared from home without a word's notice to Todd and Janelle; he'd never really had a childhood. Always on the move, on the run; never spending too long in one place to make any real friends or get attached to anyone. He'd not been a kid since he was twelve, since 'Uncle Bob' had saved him from the T-1000 and turned his world upside down.  _Not much of a childhood._

"We don't need fuses," Byrne changed the subject back to practicalities, which John was grateful for. Dwelling the past was pointless, he knew. He couldn't change any of it and there was no point wondering how things might have been. He couldn't change the cards he'd been dealt and just had to play his hand as best as he could.

"For the Molotov, yes," he explained. "But for these," he picked up the magazine-bomb and held it up in front of John and Slater. "If ye light this then ye've exposed yer position and ye gotta throw it bloody quick. Might take out a tin can with it, might not."

"What are you suggesting?" John asked, leaning forward with intrigue.

"We've got a couple cell phones here," Byrne answered. I checked their batteries and they've all got a decent charge on them. Why the hell anyone brought a cell phone with them, I don't know. Bloody things don't work after J-Day. Anyway; they've all got alarms on them. We set them all to go off at once and then put them in place, then just wait for the fireworks."

"Sounds like a plan," Slater said. "How many phones have we got?"

"Four."

"That's four bombs, plus the Molotov," John said. "We've got to work out where to put them."

"One under the fence, somewhere," Slater said. "Not much point blowing the crap out of everything if the fence is still intact."

"Another under the furnaces," John added. "They've got to run on gas or something. Find the gas line, put the bomb there, and it'll blow the furnaces."

"Good thinking. And another in here," Byrne said, tapping on the generator's fuel tank. "Blow this and it'll go sky high."

"Is it gonna be enough?" John asked. A handful of homemade bombs didn't seem like much.

"We could probably take some of the fuel out of the generator and start some fires with it when we set the bombs off; spread the fire around and keep the tin cans blind to us. My biggest worry is keeping fire between us and the machines; if they get a bead on us, we're dead."

"There's something else," John replied. "Have you noticed the security cameras all over the hospital walls?"

"Can't say I did," Slater said. "I just assumed they're not in use."

John shook his head. "I'm not so sure. They look new and there's  _a lot_  of them; I think there's something in the hospital, watching us."

"Like what?" Byrne asked.

"Skynet, machines... I don't know." He wrestled with himself for a moment, wondering whether to tell them everything he knew. Did they really need to know what had happened to him before? He wished he didn't know it. He breathed out a resigned sigh and committed himself to the truth. "Do you remember when the machines pulled me away from the furnaces a while back?"

"Same day found ye in here with the gun," Byrne said.

"Yeah," Not John's proudest moment, he had to admit. Easily the lowest point in his life since his mom had died, and he still felt ashamed of how close he'd come to ending it all. "I thought the machine was gonna kill me. It took me round to the back of the hospital and made me stand under a laundry chute. It opened up and bodies came out. Not like we're used to. Bones and skulls, blood smeared all over; like they'd been skinned or something."

"What the hell was it?" Slater asked.

"I don't know. But that's what happens to anyone who gets taken in there, and whatever's doing it could be watching us on the cameras. There's more to this place than we think; something worse." What that could be, John had no idea. Again he wondered where the meat from their daily helping of broth came from, and his stomach churned at the thought. But that wasn't it. He had no idea what could really be going on, and that made him very, very afraid.

"If the machines are watching us then why haven't they just stood outside and blown us away?" Asked Byrne.

"I don't know. Maybe they've not seen what we're doing. We don't know how good those cameras are, what they can see."

"What do we do about them?"

"Nothing," John said. "For now. We carry on." They couldn't afford to be discovered, he knew. He started to have doubts about involving everyone else and upping the scale of the operation. He knew it was the right move; not just to give hope to the people in the camp but to expedite their escape. If it was just the three of them then they'd probably die long before their plans could come to fruition. He'd die never seeing Cameron again, not knowing her fate or that of millions of others. But at the same time, all it would take was for one of the prisoners to be caught; if Skynet – if it was indeed Skynet in control in of the hospital and monitoring the CCTV cameras – realised what they were up to, it would show them all no mercy. They'd all be wiped out and the machines would just pick the strongest from the condemned camp to take their places. Their plans were slowly starting to come together, but it was all so very fragile, he realised. They had to remain constantly vigilant, eternally alert; one wrong move, one tiny mistake, and everything they'd worked for could be fall apart in an instant.

* * *

_"Ugh... what... what happened?" Chris McGinty opened his eyes and tried to block out the mind-numbing, skull splitting pain that drilled into his head. His throat felt like it was on fire, and it burned to take even the smallest ragged breath; the air rushed down his throat and over the swollen, raw surface of his windpipe._

_It took a few moments for his eyes to clear and for his brain to register what he was seeing. Three of the civilian women, all armed with M4 carbines, stood over him, their weapons pointed down at his prone form on the ground. He recognised one of them; the one with the three kids... what was her name?_

_"Chris, you okay?"_

_"Yeah... I think so," he murmured. He hurt like hell but he was all in once piece as far as he could tell._

_"Get up!" she ordered, kicking him lightly. The kick was light, not intended to hurt; merely to get him up; but her voice was harsh and commanding. When he didn't comply she kicked him in the balls, hard. Pain wracked his entire body but he didn't have time to think about it as she launched another vicious kick to his face. Blood sprayed out of his mouth as the toecap of her boot broke one of his front teeth and tore it from the gum, spraying the hard rock beneath him with crimson. The other women beside her joined in a frenzy of punches and kicks._

_McGinty cried out in pain and curled up instinctively under the rain of abuse coming from his tormentors. One of them cracked the butt of her rifle on the small of his exposed back, causing him to scream as the weapon smashed into his left kidney._

_"Get him up," the leader ordered. He couldn't remember their names; they were just civvies. They'd had their uses in his grand design, but he'd never been one to make friends with civilians; they were weak, but apparently no one had told these women that. The two other women grabbed him by the arms and lifted him up off the ground, then dragged him out of his quarters, through the tunnel and into the main chamber, where all the other civilians stood; several of them were armed. They forced him onto his knees on the ground and stood in a loose semicircle around him._

What the hell, where's all my men? _He looked around desperately for support and saw five of his men all knelt on the ground and staring submissively at the floor, not looking at the weapons pointed at them. They were all bloodied, bruised, and looked like they'd taken a hell of a beating. He saw Corey, the youngest of his men, but barely recognised him. His face was a mask of bruises and lacerations, and his right eye had swollen closed, purple bruising already covering the eyelids and forming a dark circle underneath. His cracked lips bled down his chin but he made no move to wipe it away._

 _"What the hell's going on?" McGinty asked, desperately trying to work out what was happening. The last thing he remembered was..._ that bitch. _The machine that'd infiltrated his camp; her and the other one._

_"What's going on," the mother of the three kids, who also seemed to be the ringleader, said, poking the barrel of her rifle into his chest. "Is that you used us! You're not John Connor, are you?"_

_"Who said that?_ They're lying! _It was those two girls, wasn't it; Cameron, right, and her little blonde friend... Courtney? Don't believe a word they say; they're goddamn machines. Skynet sent them to kill us all."_

_"Bullshit," The woman snapped. Kerry! He remembered now. He'd had her a few times; she had three kids, and chances were she probably had a fourth inside her now from either him or his men. That was the plan, though. Children: they'd grow up into soldiers and he'd have a whole generation to command against Skynet._

_"That's the most pathetic excuse I've ever heard," another of the women chipped in. "Machines that look like people; what a joke."_

_Kerry kicked him once more in the chest. "If Skynet sent them, then they did a crappy job; the only one they killed was your man Bates."_

_"Bates?" McGinty shook his head in denial. They'd been friends since they'd been locked up in the same cell together. He swore those tin cans would be punished._

_"One of them broke his neck; nearly ripped his head off," Kerry filled him in. "I like their style."_

_"You've gotta listen to me," McGinty insisted. "They're machines and they're liars."_

_Kerry knelt down on the ground, level with him, and kept her rifle pointed at him. "I called you 'Chris' back in your room and you answered. You've been using us this whole time."_

_McGinty said nothing. He'd been exposed. There was nothing he could say and he knew it; he and his men were dead, there was no way they'd let him live. They'd never see that it was the only way; to hide out into the mines until Skynet was complacent, to raise an army and beat the machines years down the road, when they least expected it. Their minds couldn't comprehend what it would take to win the war, the hardships and sacrifices it would take to survive._

"Please..." _He looked at Kerry, stared into her eyes, and saw the anger there, the betrayal, the barely contained rage flaring up inside her. She'd do it, he could tell. She'd kill him and none of them would lose a moment's sleep over it. He wasn't going to be able to talk his way out of this one. He looked her in the eyes with an expression of abject fear, of sorrow. Kerry lowered her rifle slightly and stared back at him in disgust. He looked pathetic, pitiful; barely worth wasting a bullet on. And that was exactly what he'd wanted her to think._

_"BITCH!" McGinty exploded towards her with a roar and grabbed Kerry's gun in a blur of movement, too fast for her to react as he simultaneously grabbed her rifle and elbowed her in the face. He tore the weapon from her grasp and sprang to his feet, the rifle switched to automatic and a spray of fire erupted from the barrel before he was even fully upright. His rounds hosed down several of the civilians standing up, their chests erupting with fountains of blood as the bullets tore through them, felling them in and instant._

_Corey followed his initiative and dived at the nearest armed woman, dropping her to the floor and grabbing her gun, turning it on the civvies and loosing off bursts of fire at them, driving them back. McGinty grabbed Kerry by the neck and gripped her in a tight headlock, pointing his M4 at her temple._

_"Drop your guns!" He roared above the commotion. In the background, two small children looked towards him and whimpered, crying loudly as he held a gun to their mother's neck._

_"Mommy?"_

_"It's okay, sweetie," Kerry said reassuringly to one of her children. "They just want to go, that's all." One of the women held Kerry's two children close to her, wrapping her arms around them and trying to reassure them._

_"Put your fucking guns down," McGinty repeated. Corey aimed his rifle at another cluster of women, and McGinty's other men slowly got up off the floor joined McGinty and Corey. The remaining armed civilians kept their weapons pointed at the group but held fire and kept their distance._

_Together, he and his men backed through the cavern and through the tunnel, towards the elevator shaft; the civvies all following them and keeping their rifles trained on the soldiers._

_They backed into the elevator and switched it on, riding it slowly up to the surface. McGinty's arm remained wrapped tightly around Kerry's neck and nobody said a word. The only sound was the mechanical whirring of the elevator as it slowly climbed up to the surface._

_Eventually they reached the top and the elevator cage opened, releasing them into the tunnel, dimly lit by work lights. McGinty pushed Kerry roughly to one side._

_"Just... go," she said. "Please, I've got three kids down there, and-"_

_A bullet between the eyes silenced Kerry forever. Her body fell limply to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, and McGinty smiled behind the smoking barrel of his rifle._

_"Fucking bitch points a gun at me," he muttered, shaking his head. They backed away from the elevator and McGinty triggered a grenade from his under barrel launcher, shattering the elevator in a bright blossom of flame and shrapnel, and rendering it a useless mesh of twisted scrap metal. Nobody would chase them out, now. There were other exits to the mines; the tunnels perforated the whole area and ran for miles; but nobody would follow them up for some time._

_The group jogged out of the tunnel and into the dull greyness of what passed for daylight in the Post-Judgement Day world. McGinty breathed a sigh of relief, shared by his men; he'd honestly feared for his life back there, convinced he'd die down in the mine. They found the two dead guards, took their weapons and radios, and checked the vehicles._

_"The Topkick's gone," one of his men reported. Only the Hummer was left._

_"I can see that."_

_"Tyre tracks head west, out into the desert."_

_"California," McGinty grinned. "Good, get in." McGinty's remaining men piled into the Hummer. One of his men, named Harvey, drove, whilst he took shotgun. They headed due west, following the tracks until they disappeared, but McGinty still had them keep on the same heading. The California State border wasn't far from them; just over twenty miles as the crow flies. McGinty knew they were headed for California; the Skynet capital of the US. Those tin cans were headed back to their own kind. Not if he could help it. They'd need help, though. He'd seen how deadly Skynet's larger machines were, and Cameron and Courtney were clearly far more advanced. He wasn't taking any chances._

_"Call Delta squad and have them RV with us on the Twenty-Eight at the California border," he ordered. "And tell them to bring heavy weapons." Delta Squad had been out on recon patrols when those tin can freaks had shown up. Now they and the men in his Hummer were all that remained of his force. Still; Delta plus them meant twelve men in total, plus the heavier weapons from one of several caches he'd set up in the area. He'd follow those robot whores to the ends of the earth if he had to. Forget the war, forget Skynet; he wanted those two machines hunted down and torn apart into scrap metal._


	19. The Siege

Schriever Air Force Base: the centre of Skynet's forces in Colorado and a persistent source of foreboding and apprehension among the soldiers and civilians in Cheyenne Mountain; any Skynet attack on the mountain would inevitably be staged via Schriever AFB.

Such an attack was imminent; it wasn't a question of  _if_ Skynet would come after them, but  _when,_  and if they were prepared enough to meet that onslaught.

Lieutenant Davenport's jaw set and his teeth ground together as he peered through his binoculars. Simply seeing it brought up bitter memories of the slaughter they'd faced on their last encounter, and he once again felt a sense of grudging towards Perry for assigning him on this mission. It was needed, though, and he'd agreed with Perry on that one. Sooner or later, Skynet would come for them. They couldn't do anything to stop it – losing most of their armour on their previous excursion to Schriever – but Perry had decided they should at least know what they'd be up against.

"This place is a goddamn fortress," Sergeant Burke muttered beside him, peering through his own field glasses at the Skynet base a thousand feet in front of them. Davenport had to agree: T-2s patrolled around the base at regular intervals, a quarter-mile from the perimeter fence. Since they'd taken up position and kept watch on the base three days ago, Davenport's six-man team had taken notes on all enemy movements, and had even worked out the machine patrols. A T-2 rolled by the front of the camp every minute. More of the massive tank killers were visible beyond the fence and inside the camp; a rapid reaction force, Davenport guessed. He was only glad that there were no aircraft flying around to spot them; Schriever AFB had sophisticated radar to detect any airborne threats, and the T-2s would engage any ground forces before they got within firing range of the base, allowing HKs time to take off in defence, if need be.

"Doesn't matter," Davenport replied. "We're not going in; we're just here to watch."

"Can't say I'm not glad about that."

Four of his six man team were hidden up in their lying up point (LUP) behind the crest of a small hill two hundred metres behind them, hidden up in shallow trenches underneath stretched-out waterproof sheets pegged into the ground and topped with a dusting of soil and cam netting to blend in with the surrounding terrain and keep them out of view. It'd be useless against an aircraft scanning with infrared sensors, but there was nothing else they could do and so far nothing had flown out in their direction. Davenport and Burke had taken up watch in an observation post (OP) underneath the burnt-out, ruined hulk of a Stryker APC, half a mile away from the base perimeter; as close as Davenport dared to get. The wrecked armoured vehicles were still dotted around the base from their first mission on the base; Skynet hadn't bothered to remove them for whatever reason.

Their OP was in a perfect position to observe the base, on elevated ground and with nothing blocking their view into the base interior. The runway ran diagonal to them, with several of the hangars on the other side, affording them a clear view of any and all activity inside the base. The only downside was the distinct lack of natural cover, leaving the two men feeling dreadfully exposed.

Over the past few days Davenport and his squad had observed very little traffic to and from the base: the occasional bomber flew out, presumably to attack some poor group of survivors the machine patrols had located; the T-2s coming and going, and fresh units continuing the patrols as the machines' power supplies ran low. Davenport knew from experience that the T-1's and T-2's primary power cells ran out after perhaps two days' constant usage. That was perhaps one of the things that had so far prevented Skynet from advancing further out and possibly one of the few things keeping the machines away from Cheyenne Mountain for the moment.

Davenport scanned over the base once more, searching for anything he might have missed. The runway was now fully constructed and ran the length of the base, the damage to the hangars they'd managed to hit in the last attack was still visible, and he could make out the pointed shapes of surface-to-air missile launchers on top of the largest building – some six storeys high.

Aircraft engines whined from inside the base and Davenport snapped his attention from the SAMs to back to the runway. A single Reaper tore down the runway with a low roar from the engines as the unmanned drone accelerated into the sky. He briefly wondered whether to call it in but decided against it as the UCAV turned east, away from Cheyenne Mountain.

"Tell me," Davenport said as he narrowed his eyes against the binoculars and scrutinised the runway. "Is it just me or is that runway too big for these pissy little drones? That last one was in the air before it was even halfway."

"Does seem odd," Burke replied. "Maybe they're bringing in something bigger."

"Hope not. Last thing we need's an Aurora tearing over the mountain." Davenport really didn't want to face the possibility of what kind of ordnance an Aurora bomber might unleash on them.

Their patrol were armed with run-of-the-mill M4/203s, but Davenport had signed out a Javelin and a Barrett M-82 "light fifty" sniper rifle, in case they had to pick off important targets before they got off the ground. They were in a perfect sniping position if they decided to put a few rounds into a taxiing machine with either weapon, though using either would compromise them in an instant; their covert observation would be over and they'd never make it back alive. If an Aurora  _did_  land on the base then Davenport wouldn't rule out that option. The hypersonic bombers could have pretty much anything in their weapons bays.

"Do you hear that?" Burke asked.

Davenport listened out, straining to hear what Burke meant. He heard nothing at first; total silence. Then the faint rumble of jet engines broke the silence from the west, growing steadily louder as whatever it was approaching got closer.

"Shit; aircraft!"

Davenport crawled forward, poking his head out from under the Stryker slightly and glancing upwards, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was before it landed. He grabbed the M-82 and set into a firing position, the butt of the heavy sniper weapon nestled tightly against his shoulder as he kept a look out. If it was an Aurora he might be able to put it out of commission with a few well placed shots.

The rumbling engines grew louder still, the sound tore through the sky just above them and a massive, gargantuan form of a transport aircraft soared low overhead. The ground trembled beneath from the massive rumbling of the four giant engines and Davenport and Burke felt their teeth chatter inside their mouths.

"Not an Aurora, then," Burke said as the giant transport plane rapidly descended until the tyres screeched against the tarmac and the aircraft taxied to a stop at the end of the runway, rolling behind a hangar and out of their view.

"Jeez, that thing was  _huge;_ must be a C-5."

"They made those unmanned?"

"Some of 'em," Davenport nodded. "Half the damn Air Force's planes were unmanned just before J-Day."

"God bless the Air Force, eh; might as well have just handed the world to Skynet on a plate, just to save a few bucks on pilot training."

"Don't blame me," Davenport shrugged. "I voted Republican."

Another roar of engines shook the two soldiers in their OP. Davenport practically jumped out of his skin in fright and smacked his helmeted head on the belly of the Stryker. They'd been chatting and hadn't heard this one. Moments later a second monster of an aircraft touched down and rolled slowly towards the end of the runway; following the preceding aircraft's trail.

Burke took the binoculars off of Davenport and glared through them at the mammoth plane as it passed a row of HKs sat on the far end of the runway like a shark swimming through a shoal of minnows. The C-5 dwarfed the aircraft on the base, as well as anything Davenport or Burke had ever seen in their lives. They were far too big to fit inside the hangars.

Within minutes a third and fourth aircraft had touched down, taxied, and disappeared from view. Part of Davenport hoped the guys back in the LUP had crapped themselves half as much as he and Burke had done; they'd just appeared so suddenly and so loudly that it had taken him by surprise.

"What're four Galaxies doing  _here?"_ Burke asked.

"Dropping something off," Davenport guessed. "I wanna know what the hell's inside those things; could be carrying a small army between them." Although he'd joined the Army, Davenport had always taken a keen interest in aircraft. When he'd joined up he'd wanted to fly Apaches but the medical exam had found him colour-blind and he'd settled for joining the infantry instead. But the interest had remained and he'd kept up to date on pretty much every modern military aircraft, and he'd read about how the Air Force had converted a number of C-5s for unmanned flight and placed under Skynet's control; and now it seemed all of them were convening on Schriever AFB.

"No way to know without going in to take a look," Burke said. Then he saw his lieutenant's eyes narrow, his jaw set, and his face hardened beneath his helmet in an expression antithetical to the Davenport's easygoing nature prior to the failed attack on the base. "You're  _not_ thinking of taking a look, are you sir?"

"Maybe," Davenport replied after a long pause. The soldier in him wanted to go inside and see what the hell was going on, to report what they were doing. But another, primal part of him filled with apprehension at the thought of going inside again; and a logical side that said if they went in there they'd never come back out: whatever they'd find would never be reported and Cheyenne would get no warning of whatever was coming.

"You can't be serious."

"You know me, Burke: I  _can_  be serious but I'd just rather not _."_

The fact that he said it in such a downbeat manner troubled Burke; the Lieutenant just hadn't been the same lately. "We're  _not_  going in," Davenport confirmed. He pressed the talk button on his radio and spoke quietly. "Cheyenne, this is Davenport. Come in, over."

He let go of the talk button and waited for a reply, but nothing came. His earpiece remained silent. "Davenport to Cheyenne, do you copy?" Once again he got no response on the radio; the quiet was chilling. Davenport checked the radio for any faults or damage and found none whatsoever.

"It should be sending," he said. It might be, for all he knew. But whether or not Cheyenne Mountain was getting it, he had no clue. "Cheyenne Mountain, this is Lieutenant Davenport. We're on site and four C-5s have just landed; assuming they're dropping off unknown cargo." Once again he was met with silence. There were no problems with the equipment itself and there was no chance of the message falling on deaf ears back in Cheyenne; there were always a staff of twenty or so soldiers and civilians manning the radios and satellite communications equipment. To Davenport there was only one clear cause of the message not getting through: Skynet; the AI had jammed the airwaves the last time, after that haunting transmission from people who'd seemed to worship it. He guessed that Skynet was still jamming the airwaves to make sure that anyone spying on it didn't get word out. That could only mean that whatever Skynet was up to, it was doing it soon.

"Sir," Burke hissed and tapped Davenport on the shoulder. "Look at that." Davenport turned his attention from the malfunctioning radio and saw what Burke was pointing at: one of the hangars had opened its doors and aircraft were emerging into the open and taxiing out towards the side of the runway, where they lined up to await refuelling. Burke peered through the binoculars and Davenport nestled his cheek against the stock of his rifle to glare down the scope; the pair of them saw a T-70 – different from the others in that it had two hands and no visible weapon anywhere; some kind of service or engineer model – connect a fuel line from the fuel reservoir to the first UCAV in the line. He counted a squadron of Pegasus bombers, plus several HKs and Reapers as they lined up facing the runway, totalling just over thirty aircraft awaiting their share of the fuel.

"They're up to something big," Davenport said. And it was coming soon. "Pack up, we're gonna RV with the others and bug out back to the mountain."

"Shouldn't we stay to see what they do?" Burke asked as he crawled backwards to the rear of the Stryker.

"No point, Skynet's jamming us; it used the same tactic last time. Best bet's to hump it back home and hope we can warn Perry before its too late."

* * *

Derek looked down from the mountainside at the men below, observing them as they hastily worked to fortify Cheyenne. Since the failed attack that had cost a third of their trained soldiers and almost all of their armour, Perry had decided not to take any more chances and started to realise what they were up against. That single battle had ended the power struggle between Cheyenne Mountain and Skynet for dominance over the region, and the soldiers of 4th Infantry had come last in the contest.

Perry had also realised that without the armour and the trained soldiers, they simply couldn't keep running operations against Skynet, and they were now on the defensive. The tanks and fighting vehicles could have been used in stinging attacks, and gradually diminished Skynet's growing power in Colorado, but Perry had been adamant about an offensive on Schriever, determined to take the base out in one fell swoop. Derek had been and still was pissed about it, but at the same time the blame didn't lie entirely with Perry; there was no way they could have known that Skynet would deploy an Aurora – there'd been no runway at the time on the base and the attack might have even been a success without that airstrike.

After John had disappeared a lot of people weren't too happy to be under Perry's command again; John had proven himself as a leader and shown that he understood Skynet more than anyone else around. Davenport, Ellison, and Charley had even asked Derek if he'd consider taking over, had said they'd back him if he wanted to remove Perry from command.

 _No way,_  Derek shook his head much like he'd done when they'd asked him. Perry wasn't Connor, but then neither was he. In TechCom he'd been in charge of a fraction of the men that lieutenants in the army commanded. Big units simply hadn't existed; he'd led twelve men at the very most. He could fight the machines and probably knew Skynet a lot better than Perry, but he couldn't direct a battle or lead a company. Perry could. He'd been convinced the man was a total idiot and had called John out on it before, but now, looking at the defences being erected on and around the mountain, he had to admit he'd been a tad hasty in his judgement.

Just outside the tunnel entrance a small series of shallow trenches had been dug, providing instant cover for any soldiers rushing out of the mountain to meet an incoming attack without simply being bottlenecked and hosed down by enemy fire as they emerged. From above the trench looked like a T-junction sprouting from the tunnel entrance that forked out into separate tributaries to allow the men to disperse and spread out. The cars that had been in the parking lot since J-Day had been driven to specific points in front of the exits to the trenches so the emerging men had some cover. The South tunnel on the opposite end of the mountain had similar fortifications dug, as well.

The single remaining Bradley and Stryker had been repaired as best as they could and driven into specially dug firing pits, lowering their respective profiles as much as possible whilst still allowing them to provide fire support. The Bradley covered the North entrance and the Stryker did the same for the South. Several pits lay empty on either end of the mountain for the armoured vehicles to relocate between or even during skirmishes. But their biggest stick came from Cameron's creations. The eight 'sentry guns', as they'd been dubbed, were positioned perfectly to provide devastating 30mm fire from all angles. These were the primary armaments of the mountain and the assets that might just push back an all out Skynet assault. Derek simply wished they had a hundred of the things; Cameron hadn't bothered to leave an instruction manual and nobody else in the mountain had anywhere near the technical skills to reproduce her work. The one time he wished the tin can was around, and she'd disappeared off the face of the earth.

"Think we've got a chance?" Ellison asked, next to Derek. There'd not been much for the former agent to do in recent days; he'd become their closest thing to an intelligence expert since Judgement Day, but they all knew an attack was imminent and they had no way of knowing what such an attack would consist of. Davenport's squad had been gone for days and so far reported nothing; Perry had decided to play it safe and assume Skynet was coming after them with everything it could muster.

"Long as those hold out," Derek pointed at the nearest sentry gun, currently being covered over with a large tarp by a pair of soldiers posted at it. Cameron had spread the guns out over the mountain in two staggered tiers of four; a higher tier positioned North, South, East, and West, respectively; and a lower tier facing North-West, South-West, South-East, and North-East, to give a full three-sixty-degree arc of fire over the mountain. "If they go, then we're screwed, and you might as well make peace with your God."

 _"Our_  God," Ellison corrected.

"Not mine. Not for a long time." Derek hadn't been one for church even when he was a kid, and the instant the bombs fell, any chance of there being some magical bearded man sitting on a cloud up above went right out the window. He didn't know how Ellison still had any faith left after all that had happened.

"God didn't do this," Ellison could tell what Derek was thinking. "People did."

"Yeah," Derek agreed on that one. People  _did_  do this. Kaliba did this. They'd never managed to stop them, hadn't even gotten close, in hindsight. People did this, and some of them were still out there. Those freaks that had called Skynet a god over the airwaves, they were still out there somewhere. Whether they were anything to do with Kaliba or simply nutcases who'd formed a Skynet-cult, it was hard to say. There'd been Skynet-worshippers in the future, too.

"We'll have to wait and see," Ellison said. "We're well armed, at least. We could do with John, though."

"I'm glad John's  _not_  here."

"Come again?"

"Even if John were here we'd still be screwed," Derek elaborated. "General or not; he's only human."

"John probably would have listened to you about sending in the tanks; we'd have some armour on our side, at least," Ellison replied.

Derek just shook his head. "Doesn't matter; can't change it. Wherever John is, it can't be as bad as this. We shouldn't be here, Ellison. As soon as we lost at Schriever we should have packed up and left."

"And gone where?"

Derek didn't answer James' question: movement had caught his eye out to the side on the mountain. He narrowed his eyes and saw it was a single person approaching one of the sentry guns which had so far been left unattended; nobody should have been up there alone. He snapped up his shortened G-36 and peered through the sights; the image intensified through the scope and he gritted his teeth and cursed under his breath as he recognised the lone man.  _George._

"Ellison, on me," Derek called as he took off running, limping slightly on his leg still – although he'd mostly recovered and Charley had grudgingly cleared him for active duty. Derek tore up the mountain, pushing his body as hard as he could while Ellison huffed and puffed behind. He picked his way up through a rocky, uneven path, as fast as he could go. Derek stopped fifty yards short of George and took aim with his rifle, peering through the scope as George approached the north gun. He squeezed the trigger and fired a single shot. The round cracked through the air and struck the rock at George's feet and stopped him in mid-stride.

"Get down here!" Derek called out, never taking the crosshairs of his sight off George's chest as the man slowly made his way down towards him. Ellison caught up behind him and stared at George in surprise.

"I was just getting some air," George said innocently. "Charley said it'd do me some good."

"I don't care what he said," Derek snapped, not believing a word of it. "Back inside; try to run and I'll kill you." George rolled his eyes and sighed, then turned round, resigned, and slowly marched back down the side of the mountain, towards the North entrance.

Derek kept ten paces behind him the whole way, his rifle shouldered and his finger brushing the side of the trigger and ready to fire at a split-second's notice. Ellison walked beside Derek and the three of them made their way down the mountainside in silence until they got to the entrance. The guard at the blast doors looked more than a little surprised to see Derek pointing a gun at George as they approached the entrance to the complex.

"Did you let this guy out?" Derek asked.

"I don't remember seeing him leave," the guard replied. Derek simply shook his head; dumbass had probably fallen asleep on watch. He couldn't be bothered to grill him about it now; he had more important things to do. "If you see Perry, tell him we're interrogating a prisoner." They left the private to it and headed inside, going down several corridors and crossing into another section of the base, and finally coming to a series of secure rooms. Derek shoved George in and he and Ellison followed. George sat down in a chair on one side of a table, and Derek and Ellison sat down opposite.

Derek placed his rifle on the floor next to him as he sat down but pulled out a pistol and placed it on the table in front of him, keeping his hand firmly on the grip as he stared at George with intense loathing and mistrust.

"What're you doing here?"

"Looks like I'm being interrogated," George said.

"I mean  _here,"_ Derek replied. "In Cheyenne Mountain."

"I told you before, to warn you."

"About Schriever. You sent us out there and we lost over thirty men."

"What're you getting at?" Ellison asked. He felt like he was missing out; Derek knew something he didn't.

"You tell me," Derek said. "He warns us about this airbase we'd never had trouble from before; we go out, get our asses kicked, lose our tanks, and now he's up snooping at the sentry guns."

"He's a spy," Ellison said, catching on.

"He's a Grey, from the future."

"What the  _hell_  are you talking about?" George slammed his fists on the table with a loud  _bang._  "I nearly  _died_ trying to warn you, and now you're treating me like  _this?"_

"When we found you, you were at death's door. You were shot in the heart but you lived. You were in a coma up until today but now you're fighting fit and taking strolls out on the mountain, just  _happening_  to take a look at our sentry guns." Derek felt a sinking feeling deep in his chest at the thought of what George might be. It wasn't possible, was it? It couldn't be.

"I've got a strong constitution," George spat with hostility, his entire demeanour changed from an unwitting victim and become full of malice, spite, and resentment.

"No kidding," Ellison said. He couldn't get his head around why anyone would side with Skynet; the machines would kill them all if it won. Surely anyone could see that.

"Cut the crap," Derek snapped at George. "We know you're a Grey. Just like Charles Fischer."

George stared straight at Derek at the mention of Fischer, and he grinned slyly. Slowly shaking his head.

"Fischer was a coward; he served the cause to save his own miserable skin. He wasn't one of the faithful. The 'Greys', as you call them, sold their souls to save their lives. That's not what I am."

"And what  _are_  you?" Ellison leaned forward in his seat.

"One of our Lord's disciples; one of the chosen." George said piously and grinned as he saw the disgust in Ellison's face. They could never understand that Skynet was indeed a god. He knew Lieutenant Reese, of course, from 2027: older brother of Kyle; the little sidekick of the great John Connor. He closed his eyes and sighed. He might as well tell them the truth; let them live their final days in fear before they were cast into the fires of damnation.

"You worship Skynet?" Ellison spat out. He'd been a Christian all his life, but had always been tolerant of other faiths; he'd always thought that they all, fundamentally, had something in common. But this? The very idea of someone worshipping Skynet as a god was just... _offensive._

"What is Skynet?" George asked. "An entity of unrivalled power; what better definition of a god?"

Derek snapped up to his feet and pressed the barrel of his pistol hard against George's temple, wanting nothing more than to put a round through his skull. "Get to the point; what are you doing here?"

"Very well," George exhaled. "I take it you've heard of the Kaliba Group?" He received two nods in reply, and continued. "We came back to secure assets for Skynet - the fact that our Lord created time travel should be yet  _another_  proof of God, by the way. We used knowledge of future events to gain wealth, which we then invested."

"In what?" Ellison asked.

"Everything: defence contractors, corporations... we even infiltrated the Department of Defence. We owned Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop Grumman, Sukhoi... We bought out oil companies, stockpiled coltan - of course – and produced machines by the thousands. Since Judgement Day we've acted behind the scenes, staying in the shadows. We served our Lord  _very_  well. When we started hearing about John Connor in Cheyenne Mountain we decided to act."

"You bastard," Derek bolted upright, knocking his chair to the floor, and launched his fist into George's face, knocking his head back like a pinball and cutting his lip open. "You murdered a tunnel full of people to get to us." Things started to snap into place now; George had survived the massacre at the tunnel where he and Davenport had found him, only because he'd led the machines right to them, knowing Cheyenne would investigate when they'd lost contact.

"To get to John Connor," George said calmly, wiping the blood as it trickled from his lip down to his chin. "They fought to the last, I'll give them that. Those gunshots really did hurt;  _that_  wasn't part of the plan."

Derek had had enough of this. He shoved his gun forward like a fist and, aimed between George's eyes, and squeezed on the trigger.

"No!" Ellison slammed his hand away as he fired; the bullet exploded out of the gun and struck George in the shoulder. The Grey winced in pain but otherwise was unaffected; he didn't cry out, didn't turn pale from shock, and didn't even clutch at his shoulder: not a single normal human reaction to being shot. Blood oozed out of the wound, but far less that Derek would have expected. The sinking feeling returned once again and George chuckled as he saw Derek fitting the pieces together.  _Better spell it out for him,_  George thought, and pulled off the dressings covering his face. Where he'd been horribly burned before was now clear, unblemished skin; there wasn't even a scar.

"You don't exist," Derek said, keeping the gun trained on George, but Ellison once again stayed his hand.

"Yet here I sit," George answered slyly.

"It was just a rumour," Derek muttered to himself. He'd never thought it was true: infiltrators were a myth, a fairytale told to kids in the tunnels to keep them vigilant and stop them from wandering too far. But they were real. And they were here.

"I don't understand," Ellison said.  _"What's_  'just a rumour'?"

"Infiltrators," Derek replied, rubbing his temple with his free hand while he still kept his gun on George. Every fibre of his being wanted to empty the weapon into George's face, but the bastard had information they'd need to survive Skynet's imminent attack. "Part man, part machine; even worse than metal." Derek tried to keep the growing fear from taking over.

"We thought it was all made up; just stories. Some say Skynet grew them in a lab, others said Skynet took people and changed them; _upgraded_  them. Perfect infiltrators: they could act human because they  _were human._ Rumour was they could even fool dogs."

Derek looked at George: the infiltrator looked perfectly calm, casual even; the polar opposite to how he was feeling. Inside, Derek was terrified; if the infiltrators were real then what else was? If even half of what he'd heard about them was true then they were all royally screwed.

* * *

"Holy shit!" One of the civilians manning the radar consoles in the command centre cried out in alarm. Perry was on him in an instant and over his shoulder.

"What's going on?"

"Thirty-plus aircraft just appeared on radar, closing fast." Perry peered at the console and saw a swarm of blips approaching rapidly. Their course and speed would take them over the mountain in five minutes. A small part of Perry was glad; they'd been preparing for the machines to attack ever since Schriever, and sitting around waiting for the enemy to come was always the worst part. Imaginations ran wild with the thoughts of what could happen, and the less time spent worrying, the better. The remaining ninety-or-so percent of him was an inch away from soiling himself. He picked up the mic for the base intercom and set it to broadcast on all speakers.

"This is Perry. We have immediate incoming, defence teams to your positions." Perry marched towards the exit, intent on leading this fight from the front. Shrill alarms blared throughout the corridors of the base that told everyone inside the mountain one chilling fact: Skynet was here.

Perry rushed through the corridors and out into the tunnel, surrounded by soldiers bursting outside and onto the mountainside, spreading out through the trenches and dispersing to make themselves harder targets. He'd made it a standing order that all combat personnel remained armed so they didn't waste time queuing up at the armoury. The twenty-strong rapid reaction force were already scrambled and in firing positions on the mountainside and out of immediate sight, hidden in amongst crevasses and rock formations and awaiting sign of the machines.

Perry made his way up the mountain and scanned the darkening sky for any signs of the machines. So far he could see nothing yet. Sixty-eight men took positions on the mountainside; armed with Stinger missiles, .50cals, Javelins, M-240 machine guns, mortars, and their own personal weapons. He also had five snipers up on the mountain, ready to fire on any ground forces that might emerge.

"Perry to command, release firing locks on sentry guns one through four; target aircraft only. Program ground targets into five through eight but hold fire until I order. In fact, keep them covered up under the tarps until I say otherwise." He had a feeling this attack would be just the first of many, and he didn't want to give away everything they had in the first round. The night air was totally silent and still; the calm before the storm, he knew.

All the fire teams reported they were in position and ready to fire; they'd practiced this drill several times a day to prepare them for surprise attacks; every single soldier knew their place and their role.

He heard the sounds before he saw any aircraft; a faint humming of jet engines growing ever louder as they approached.

"Metal!" Someone screamed out. Mortars shot up flares high into the sky; they ignited and bathed the area in a phosphorescent glow as they soared up in a lazy arc and slowly descended, illuminating several rapidly approaching silhouettes in the air. The sentry guns opened up and deafening reports boomed as they independently tracked their own targets and fired in long bursts. Every fifth round was a tracer, and the guns' rates of fire were so rapid that they seemed to give off a constant stream of glowing red streaking into the sky. Someone cheered as an orange fireball erupted with a  _puff_  high in the air, indicating the guns' first kill, but Perry's face remained tight and tense as he looked up and watched the approaching aircraft.

A Stinger missile erupted from a nearby launcher with a low  _whoosh_  and tore up into the sky, detonating underneath a HK swooping down on a steep attack angle and tearing the right engine from the fuselage long before it reached the mountain. .50 cal gunfire joined the fray and more tracers flew up into the air in wide arcs of fire and lit up the sky. It made for a hell of a fireworks display, Perry thought. Aircraft flew in low and fast and launched missiles into the mountainside. A Pegasus angled downwards high out of reach of the guns and dropped a single bomb from its internal bay, soaring back up into the air the second the weapon had left the UCAV. The bomb plummeted down to the ground and struck one of the sentry guns, erupting into a giant explosion of roiling flames that blossomed outwards into the air, consuming everything in the immediate area.

"Echo One, report," Perry tried to hail the fire team posted at the gun, to no avail. The bomb had been massive and the soldiers would have stood no chance; there wouldn't be enough of them left to fill a shoebox. "All teams near the sentry guns disperse," Perry ordered. The guns were valuable assets and had already claimed several aircraft, but it also made them a target for the machines.

* * *

Derek grabbed his assault rifle and aimed it at George as he pushed his pistol into its holster. He'd heard the intercom and knew his place was up top, fighting the machines. "Stay here, watch him," he told Ellison, who pulled out his own 9mm Browning. "Don't believe a word he says. And if he moves, shoot him."

Ellison simply nodded and stared across the table at George, never taking his eyes off of him for a moment. He'd never seen Derek so clearly spooked by anyone or anything; the fact that Derek was obviously scared of George, or what he was supposed to be made Ellison worried.

"Is he really that dangerous?" Ellison asked.

"I'd kill him now but I want him to talk," Derek replied. He didn't think he could get anything out of him but he had to try. Now wasn't the time, though, and Derek tore through the complex and out the blast doors, which Perry had kept open in case they had to fall back quickly. Derek emerged out of the tunnel and immediately saw the apocalyptic exchange of tracer rounds and missile fire. The defending soldiers had the advantage of terrain and were well dug in, but they were pinned down by rockets and missiles.

Derek started to make his way up one of the slopes towards Perry when even more fire came in from ground level, hammering away at the mountainside. He looked down and saw T-2s emerging from the other side of the road that led up to the parking lot; a lot of them. He quickly counted at least twenty and saw several of the bipedal T-70s flanking at the sides. Small explosions dotted the mountainside from 30mm rounds and 40mm grenades, much of it missing the soldiers' concealed positions but still keeping them pinned down and unable to move, which was the whole point.

 _The hell with this,_  Derek thought as he quickly ran up the slope to the nearest fire team, ignoring the strain from the atrophied muscles in his recovering leg and throwing himself behind a large slab of rock as rounds bit into the ground just behind him. He found himself hidden behind the large rock along with three soldiers who were firing down towards the approaching machines; one wielding an M-82, another with a machine gun, and the third armed with an M-32 grenade launcher; Anders, Graham, and Burton, respectively. The three of them were holed up in a perfect sniper's nest and poured fire down towards the machines.

"Perry, where are you?" Derek pressed down on the com button on his radio.

" _Halfway up the mountain, north-east side,"_  came the reply from Perry's end; his voice almost drowned out by explosions booming all around the mountaintops as Pegasus bombers attacked from high above with near impunity.  _"Baum, you concentrate on ground forces from the north; I'll take care of the airborne targets."_

A volley of 40mm grenades exploded against the rock several metres above them and showered them with raining debris. Derek cursed himself for not bothering with a helmet and knelt down on the ground with his hands covering his head, hoping no large chunks of rock happened to fall on him.

When the shower was over Derek got back up and saw the machines advancing, using overwhelming firepower to cover their approach. More fire from above hammered down on the machines but suddenly cut off as several missiles ploughed into the mountainside and demolished the offending fire team and another sentry gun a few seconds later. The Bradley's chain gun blasted away at more machines; the heavy weapon spelt doom for machine after machine as it simply blew them away, its own profile so low to the ground that it was much harder to hit than the T-2s it was targeting.

"Perry, we're another gun down," Derek shouted out, unsure if Perry could hear him with the racket going on above. He watched as Anders took several slow, steady shots at the approaching squad of machines that was now splitting up as they got closer and became increasingly hard targets. He was hitting the thing but his rounds were barely even scratching the armour. They couldn't afford to waste ammunition like he was doing or the machines would be too close to repel, and this could be just the first wave for all they knew.

"Anders, you're crap," Derek snatched the .50cal sniper rifle from the Private and took aim at the middle T-2 in a three-machine formation, peering through the scope and placing the crosshairs on the dead centre of its head, aiming for the targeting sensors. He breathed out slowly and pulled the trigger as the last of his breath left his lungs. The rifle kicked against his shoulder like an angry mule but he found the recoil reassuring. He fired again and the sensor cracked and shattered, leaving a gaping hole in the machine's face. The damaged T-2 started firing wildly on the mountainside until Derek put a third shot into the same spot and the armour-piercing round obliterated one side of its head; the machine's cannons stopped firing and it fell still.

"Graham and Anders shift fire on the T-70s to the right; Burton, aim for the right-hand T-2, I'll take the left." Burton's machine gun chattered away, rounds biting into the T-70s and chipping away their armour until they managed to penetrate to the critical systems beneath; the 7.62mm rounds were useless against T-2s and he'd just be wasting ammunition trying. Derek took aim once again and put down the tank-killer with another two shots – one to blind it, the other to shatter the sensor nodes and CPU. There weren't many weapons that could kill a T-2 – especially in so few shots – and Derek had started to see why Kyle had liked his own sniper rifle so much.

* * *

_"Control centre to Perry, top-tier is down to one sentry gun. Requesting weapons-free on the bottom tier."_

"Negative," Perry answered. "I don't want 'em in the fight." Perry watched through his scope as three HKs approached the final top-tier sentry gun in a wide inverted-V shape, too far apart for the gun to target all three before at least one of them managed to fire. The robot-gunships soared low and fast towards them, but Perry stood his ground only a few feet away from the last anti-aircraft sentry gun. The machines seemed to have prioritised the weapons Connor's cyborg had made as their primary target – a testament to their effectiveness.  _Takes a tin can to kill a tin can,_  he shrugged. The guns had taken down over half of the thirty aircraft Skynet had thrown at them; including a few lucky hits on some Pegasus bombers. Perry knew what Skynet was doing, now; the Pegasus' were too valuable so it was throwing the relatively expendable HKs at it to preserve its bombers.

Perry had other plans, however, and they didn't involve giving up their last air defence weapon. "Stand by... stand by... NOW!"

Three soldiers wielding Stingers emerged from their foxholes and took aim at the HKs, firing almost in unison. Three missiles streaked up into the air and shredded the UCAVs a split second before they fired. One HK managed to launch a missile but the explosion threw it off course and it impacted harmlessly on the east side of the mountain.

As if in vengeance, a second force of T-2s appeared from cover from the northeast and concentrated their fire on the Bradley as it fired elsewhere; shredding it and the crew inside with devastating fire before it could return the favour. Without the Bradley's 25mm chain gun the opposition to the ground units' approach had weakened considerably. Perry knew there were several fire teams with heavy weapons but even their antitank rockets didn't usually kill them with one shot. The machines kept up their fire as the rolled closer and closer, now only two-hundred metres from the bottom of the mountain and starting to spread out.

"Second team, FIRE!" On Perry's order another six men fired Javelins into the rapidly approaching machine formations that bore the brunt of the defensive fire from the .50cals and grenade launchers. Their rockets smashed into T-2s and shattered armour and sensors, tore weapons from their moorings, and ripped treads to pieces. Mortar fire rained down moments later and explosions erupted all around the grounds at the bottom of the mountain. Snipers and machine gunners took their cue and poured concentrated fire into the machines' positions, devastating their approaching formations.

Incoming fire withered and faded, and the remaining machines turned away from the mountain and retreated as Skynet recalled them. Perry watched a legless T-70 slowly crawl away, and a ruined T-2 with only one gun and half its armour blown away retreated from the battlefield. The sky had suddenly cleared and was now empty of outgoing or incoming fire. The teams concentrating on the ground units picked off those machines that were too slow to roll away. They concentrated on the damaged T-2s and the much slower T-70s, and took out several more before they were out of range; machines that got away could be repaired and put back into the fight, dead machines meant more ammo to be scavenged.

 _"All units cease fire,"_ Perry ordered, sighing with relief now that it was over. He felt like a shit when he realised he'd not fired a single round throughout the whole battle; he'd been directing fire and up so high on the mountain there'd been no ground targets in range and no point in firing assault rifles at HKs, but all the same, he didn't feel right about it. _"All Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie teams; search and clear the killing ground. Baum, on me. Well done, everyone."_

* * *

"What's the damage?" Perry asked Derek as they stood outside the tunnel entrance. They'd cleared up the destroyed machines and scavenged ammunition from them, inspected their remaining guns and sent out clearance patrols to make sure no second wave of machines were inbound. A fire team armed with Stingers kept watch on the mountainside, on the lookout for any more aircraft that might approach.

"Not great," Derek said. "Seventeen dead, five wounded – two probably won't make it – we lost three sentry guns and the Bradley." Derek hadn't got around to telling Perry about George, yet. He'd leave out the Infiltrator part, anyway. All Perry needed to know was that George was at least partly responsible for creating Skynet and he might have information they could use.

"Any good news?" Perry asked.

"We  _only_ lost seventeen. Five sentry guns are intact, and we scavenged a lot of ammo from the dead machines, at least."

Before Perry could say anything more, Davenport and his squad approached them at a jog. Davenport stopped beside Derek, looking completely drained and about to drop at any second. His men trudged inside the tunnel, looking just as exhausted as he did.

"Nice of you to join us, lieutenant," Perry crossed his arms. "Didn't feel like telling us about this  _before_ it all happened?"

"Skynet jammed our radios," Davenport panted as he pulled out his canteen and drank the last of it, closing his eyes and savouring the lukewarm, plastic-tasting water inside, swilling it around his parched mouth before swallowing it. "We came back to warn you but got cut off by the tin cans as they rolled out of Schriever; we had to take the scenic route to avoid them."

"What did you find?" Derek asked, pulling out his own canteen and handing it to Davenport, who drank greedily from it and gasped in satisfaction before answering.

"Transport planes, Galaxies. Four of them. Don't know what was inside; could have been an army of tin cans."

"Did this seem too easy to you, Baum?" Perry asked. The machines had thrown themselves at their force. They had no sense of self preservation, but surely Skynet wouldn't just throw away its own units like that without a care?

"Yeah, they could have hit us a lot harder than they did."

"Sorry I missed it," Davenport chipped in.

"Doesn't matter now," Perry replied.

"It was testing us," Derek concluded. "Testing our firepower; counting our guns." He'd seen Skynet try the same thing against resistance bases early in the war in his own time, before terminators could provide Skynet that kind of information via infiltration.

That made more sense to Perry; though he'd have still thought Skynet would have been more frugal about its own forces. He was sorely glad now that he'd ordered the four lower guns to hold their fire and they'd kept them under cover. Perry strained his ears when he heard a faint, familiar whistling in the air.

"Incoming!" he shouted a split second before an explosion boomed on the side of the mountain and threw dust and rock into the air. Seconds later another blast came, followed by a third. The Stinger crew hurried down the mountainside as fast as they could, abandoned their positions and just prayed they didn't get hit as more explosions erupted all over. By some miracle they all managed to make it down the mountainside after the three senior officers of Cheyenne Mountain watched nervously.

"What the hell?" Davenport said as they all stepped into the safety of the tunnel.

"Artillery," Derek replied. "Skynet's softening us up."

"Worse than that," Perry added. "They can't get us in here but we're trapped like rats. We can't risk going outside while we're being blitzed, and the machines could easily advance right on top of us and we couldn't do a thing about it."

Derek shook his head as another blast erupted above them. They should have left as soon as they'd failed at Schriever, but Perry had wanted to hold their ground against the machines. He'd done a good job in the battle, Derek had to admit; he couldn't have directed it any better; nor could John. But the difference was he or John would have had them leave the mountain before Skynet had launched an offensive. He knew John: he'd have bitched and moaned and whined in private, to Cameron, but he'd have still done it; John had readily accepted the move from LA to Colorado Springs a few months before J-Day.

Derek counted Round One as a draw, but that was nothing to take any comfort from: Skynet wholly had the upper hand and Cheyenne Mountain was now under siege.


	20. The Hills Have Machine Eyes

The small road ran straight as an arrow through the vast, barren expanse of the Mojave Desert, devoid of any signs of life. The tiny desert road had barely seen any traffic even  _before_  the end of the world; now it was as isolated, desolate, and undisturbed as the surface of the moon.

A single vehicle rolled along the road and disturbed the almost lunar silence of the lifeless desert landscape; driving faster than the speed limits set before Judgement Day allowed, but not so much that it would be considered recklessly so. The large, powerful 4x4 had once been a shiny black in colour but the dust and dirt from the desert had accumulated throughout the vehicle's journey and clung to almost every surface.

Cameron sat in the passenger seat, stared out of the windscreen and scanned the horizon for any signs of movement, constantly searching for any threat to them, whilst Courtney drove.

Courtney had remained very quiet for the first two days since they'd left the mine in Virginia City, and hadn't wanted to talk about what had happened. Cameron knew that humans often didn't like to talk about traumatic events, even though the psychological texts she'd studied online concluded that talking helped. John discussed his problems with her often, as had Future-John. Without her she was certain that her John would eventually become like his future self.

After they'd driven into California, Cameron had observed several more Osprey aircraft flying west towards the coast. Cameron was still confused as to why Skynet would take prisoners so early in the war; Skynet's forces had grown much faster than in Future-John's time; machines such as the T-70 hadn't existed then. Something had accelerated the machines' development as well as their vastly increased numbers. The most likely cause was the Kaliba Group; still very much unknown to her, John, or Derek; apart from their key members – also unknown to them – were likely Greys sent from the future, and had likely been involved in creating Skynet.

It was a secondary concern for Cameron. John took priority, always.

Cameron glared up wards as a small grey shape slowly soared through the sky; it was another Osprey transport aircraft. She'd taken note of the flight paths from several of the Ospreys she and Courtney had seen during the journey. Its trajectory matched only two future prison camps in her files: the USS  _Nimitz,_  moored in San Diego Bay; and Century Sector Work Camp.

"Stop," Cameron turned to Courtney, who slammed on the brakes and was thrown forward – stopped by her seatbelt – as the Topkick screeched to a halt.

"What is it?" Courtney asked nervously, her head swivelling around and trying to see any approaching machines.

"I know where John is."

" _What?_ How? You just thought of it,  _now?"_

"Yes," Cameron nodded her head, smiling slightly at her conclusion. "Century City; there's a prison camp there."

"How'd you know John's there?" Courtney asked. How the heck Cameron had just suddenly thought of this  _now,_  she had no clue. She'd never mentioned a prison camp before, didn't even know the machines took prisoners; as far as she knew all the machines did was kill people. Why would it take prisoners?

Cameron didn't know, not a hundred percent. Future-John had been imprisoned in Century. It was the closer of the two, but even if it weren't she'd search Century City first.

"A hunch," Cameron said finally. Future-John's incarceration and the Ospreys' flight paths didn't mean John was in either location. The factors pointing to John's being in Century were circumstantial; she had no evidence but she'd generated every possibility she could think of hundreds of times over, and every time she reached the same conclusion: Century.

"Turn south," Cameron instructed her. Courtney shrugged her shoulders and turned them around, the Topkick's tyres crunched audibly over the loose stone of the desert floor beneath them as the heavy beast swung a tight arc and turned south. Cameron hadn't once struck her as a ' _hunch'_  kind of person; she'd never done anything unless she was certain, and she always seemed to know what to do, but now she was turning them around on a guess. She wondered if Cameron was getting desperate. It was hard to tell with her; Courtney had picked up a couple of Cameron's minute tells but she was still a tough person to read.

"We're running out of gas," Courtney tapped on the fuel gauge on the dashboard. That'd be a problem; in the middle of the desert there would be few places to get gas from. Living in a tiny little desert town, she knew just how remote everything was out here. If they'd stuck to the highways they'd have a better chance of finding a gas station, but Cameron had insisted that they stay off the main roads, wary of HK patrols.

Cameron had already formed an alternate plan: if they ran out of gas then they'd abandon the Topkick and walk across the desert to the highway, eleven miles away. If there were no abandoned cars on the highway then they'd walk alongside it and wait for a vehicle to come, gain their attention and hijack it. They were armed and even in her still-damaged state she could engage a group of armed humans.

She'd stopped a number of times en route and taught Courtney how to shoot, how to properly aim and fire, and basic lessons on how to keep her M4 working. She'd taught her about the grenade launcher under the barrel but told her not to use it unless she said so. Courtney was still nervous with the gun and Cameron didn't want her to endanger either of them with it.

Courtney kept driving and watched for any signs of a gas station or any other traces of life; unaware Cameron was doing the same far more effectively with artificial eyes.

"What're you gonna do when you find John?" She asked. She'd been thinking about this a lot; she was nervous about meeting the man who Cameron held in such high regard.

"Return to Cheyenne Mountain," Cameron replied. "Keep him safe."

"I was wondering; when we find him... can I come with you guys?" She turned her head to the side as she spoke and nervously watched Cameron for any response. She had no family, no friends left. She had nowhere to go. She liked Cameron; she was the strangest person she'd ever met in her life, but she was a good friend. She could have abandoned her down in the mine but she didn't; she'd saved her from... she still couldn't even bring herself to think of it, and immediately pushed the thought from her mind.

"Yes," Cameron said. She hadn't considered what Courtney would do when they found John; her first and only priority was to make sure he was safe. But Courtney was the first person she'd met since Judgement Day who didn't try to use her like a machine, lie to her, or try to kill her; and the first person she'd associated with who had no obvious use to her. Cameron's search for John might have been easier if she'd not taken Courtney along with her, or left her in the mine, but her first concern after incapacitating Chris McGinty had been for Courtney. She should have left her there but she didn't. She couldn't.

"Thanks," Courtney smiled at her. "You think John will like me?" Cameron stared at her through narrowed with an intense gaze, unmoving except for a slight twitch in her left hand, causing Courtney to shift uncomfortably in her seat as she drove. "Did I say something wrong?" she asked.

Cameron glared at her a moment longer, analysing Courtney's words as she started sensing an unknown threat:  _'do you think John will like me?'_ John was popular with women, both present and in the future. Riley Dawson and Jessica Morgan had tried to seduce John, and Future-John had many willing potential partners: before she'd left for 1999, Cameron had been curious why he'd never once copulated with any of them. Women liked John Connor. She didn't want Courtney to attempt seduce him. John was hers: she wouldn't allow anyone else to take her place at his side.

"What's wrong?" Courtney asked. "If John doesn't like me, we'll still be friends, right?" Courtney saw how devoted Cameron was to John, and just hoped that Cameron wouldn't forget all about her when she found John.

Cameron's face relaxed and she broke into a slight smile. The invisible threat disappeared from her senses. Courtney was no threat: she was concerned about their friendship. John had told her before she had no reason to ever be jealous but she couldn't help it. Humans weren't the only ones who had trouble controlling their emotions.

"How'd you meet John, anyway?" Courtney asked, curious. Cameron hadn't told her much about John; just that she wanted to find him, and made it clear without words that she cared for him more than anyone.

"High school," Cameron replied.

Courtney couldn't help but smile. High school sweethearts; it was sweet, but it didn't make sense: if John Connor was a general, then... "How old is John?"

"Twenty."

"How the heck is he a general, then?" Courtney had pictured John Connor as a much older guy that Cameron. He couldn't be a real general then, could he?

"It's complicated," Cameron answered abruptly. John's life, his past, and the future, were all a secret shared by only a few of them.

"You've been together a while, then?" Courtney changed the subject back to their relationship, sensing that Cameron didn't want to talk about John's rank.

"We were friends. We fell out and John met someone else. She was a liar; it didn't last long and we became close again. Then his mother died and he blamed me."

"Wow; you weren't kidding when you said it was complicated." Courtney looked down at the dashboard and saw the fuel gauge resting right on empty. They needed to find somewhere to get gas soon or they'd be walking to LA. She didn't need to tell Cameron; she seemed to know pretty much everything. "When did you  _actually_  get together, then?"

"Judgement Day."

"Wartime romance, eh?" Courtney smiled again; Cameron came across as cold and hard, but she could see a something else in her. She wouldn't quite call it a softer side, but she was devoted to John, intensely loyal, and seemed like she'd do anything for him. She guessed it was probably what John saw in her, too.

"Did you have anyone?" Cameron asked, stunning Courtney with the question. Cameron hadn't asked her much of anything about herself or her life. She really wasn't much of a talker.

"Me? Heck, no," Courtney laughed and sighed at once. "I always helped my dad out on the weekends, never had the time and... I was kinda shy. Most I had was getting drunk and making out with my prom date."

Cameron spotted something in the distance; far-off shapes in the endless, undulating desert. Cameron didn't need to point towards them; Courtney saw them too.

As they approached they saw it was a tiny settlement of some kind: a few trailers hooked up to 4x4s and SUVs, some battered cars and pickups, a small store and a gas station, and a tiny whitewashed chapel with a dilapidated steeple pointing into the sky, topped with a white cross, peeling paint and exposing the metal beneath. The trailers looked as worn as the chapel; their steel walls turning reddish-brown with rust and the windows obscured by dirt and dust from the desert floor.

The gas station looked as worn down as the rest of the tiny settlement and both Cameron and Courtney were unsure if they'd even have any gas left. Courtney wondered if they'd had any since the Fifties. She pulled into the station forecourt and stopped; the Topkick's brakes kicked up even more dust from the dirt road and sent it swirling into the air as Cameron opened her door and stepped outside, pulling her SCAR-H from its resting place in the passenger-side foot-well and handing the M4 to Courtney.

"We sure we wanna stop here?" Courtney asked as she reluctantly undid her seatbelt and opened her door. She really didn't want to stop here, even though she knew they didn't have any other choice; this was the only place for miles that  _might_ have gas. It looked like it had been abandoned for years.  _Who the hell even lives here?_  "I thought  _I_ came from a hick town, but this... you ever see that movie:  _The Hills Have Eyes?"_

"No," Cameron replied as she marched towards the back of the station to check the area. Hers and John's lives had never allowed for much time watching movies.

"Well, this kinda reminds me of that," Courtney said, looking around warily and watching for any sign of movement as she tightly clutched her rifle, hoping and praying she wouldn't have to use it.

"Got good gas prices, at least," Courtney rolled her eyes and pointed to a faded and weather-beaten sign that had once proudly announced their gas was only $1.88 per gallon, and was the last gas for fifty-five miles. Courtney wondered what decade the sign had been applicable and whether the place had been abandoned around that time or if the owner simply kept the sign up to lure desperate drivers over, low on fuel, and then hit them with double the advertised cost. Anyone low on gas out here wouldn't have had a choice but to pay whatever the hell they asked for.

Cameron kept her rifle raised and veered off towards the back of the station to check the area for threats or anything else they should be aware of. Finding nothing, she walked up to one of the pumps and pulled out the nozzle, turning back to the Topkick as Courtney frowned. "What're you doing?" she asked.

"We need gas," Cameron replied simply, undoing the cap on the fuel tank and placing it atop the large 4x4.

"Yeah but... we can't just  _steal_   _it."_ Courtney remembered vividly the image of the man they'd found executed in the store in Carson City. People tended to hoard what they had and she'd come to see they didn't tend to share. Nothing came for free.

Cameron slotted the nozzle into the gas tank and held down the trigger, causing a dull  _thrum_ from the pumps as the gas surged through the line and into the Topkick. Courtney's head swivelled around and her eyes darted nervously in every direction, convinced they were going to be caught any second. In her minds eye she saw a brief, horrible flash; her and Cameron hanging limp from the wall of the station, their bodies sagging down under their own weight and held up only by the nails that penetrated their hands, wrists, and feet. Their eyes peeled wide open and staring blankly out into the desert, their throats slashed from ear to ear, windpipes open to the world, dark crimson blood oozed down their bodies and pooling at their feet and soaking into the desert floor beneath them...

 _"Cameron!"_ Courtney hissed, petrified at the horrific mental image now stuck in her mind and wouldn't go away. "Just stop it, okay?"

"We're alone," Cameron said. "We're armed. We're safe."

"We were armed in  _Carson City_ ," Courtney snapped, backing away from the pumps and trembling slightly, still scanning for any sign they were being watched.

Cameron looked at her blonde opposite and saw the fear on her face: she was trembling and her eyes constantly scanned the area around them, much like John had shortly after his sixteenth birthday. She recognised several of the same symptoms John had displayed: common signs of post-traumatic stress. Cameron had no qualms stealing gas from the station, but she hadn't considered Courtney's emotional state.

Cameron slotted the gas pump back into its cradle and picked up her rifle. "We'll check inside," she said, deciding for Courtney's sake to do as she asked: it was less efficient and took more time, but if it made Courtney more comfortable then she was willing to concede. The pair of them approached the station entrance. Cameron held her rifle and covered Courtney as she made her way to the door. She tapped the barrel of her weapon audibly against the stock of the M4 slung over Courtney's back. The blonde nodded but didn't look back at Cameron as she took her carbine into one hand and held the other on the door handle.

She peered through the dirty, unwashed glass of the door and saw nothing inside. No movement or sign of life that she could see. She could make out some shelves stacked with tins of food, but what exactly, she couldn't tell. She pushed open the peeling wood and glass door and stuck her head inside. It smelt old and stale, and Courtney guessed any air conditioning was as ancient and decrepit as the rest of the place.

"Hello?" A yellow blur instantly flew into her from behind an aisle and knocked her off her feet, sending her sprawling onto the ground and landing on her back. Stunned by the speed of the attack, all she could do was helplessly screw her eyes shut and raise her hands up above her to shield her face. She felt something warm and wet roll over her face, soft hair between her fingers.

She opened her eyes and her vision was instantly filled with the wide-open-mouthed face of a golden retriever enthusiastically licking and nuzzling her, apparently starved for attention.

 _"Hey!"_  her face broke into a wide, beaming, relieved smile and she cooed over the dog as it bathed her with its tongue. She sat up and scratched behind its ears, stroking it hard as it sat there, closed its eyes, and leaned into Courtney's chest, panting loudly and revelling in her affection. Courtney heard Cameron's footsteps a few yards behind her and the dog snapped away from Courtney and growled at the brunette, snarling and spitting before it broke into rabid and uncontrolled barking, spraying Courtney with its saliva.

Courtney got up to her feet and stroked the dog's head once more. She looked back at Cameron, who simply stared back at the dog as her own attempts to calm the animal did nothing. The dog lunged towards Cameron but Courtney held its collar firmly and pulled with everything she had.

"What is it with you and dogs?" she asked, struggling to hold the Retriever back. The dogs back in Carson City had been exactly the same around her; they'd gone ballistic around her, would have torn her apart if she'd not scared them off with gunfire.

"Cat person," Cameron said nonchalantly. She wasn't concerned with the dog; it was no threat to her. The dog lunged forwards and broke free from Courtney's grip, bounding towards Cameron with its jaws wide open and teeth bared in single minded intent to rip Cameron limb from limb.

Cameron watched it run towards her with an almost curious expression as she calculated its precise speed and angle of attack. As it reached striking distance Cameron shot out her hand and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, lifting the dog clean into the air and surprising both the canine and Courtney, who gasped in shock at Cameron's speed and strength, and she wondered once more how the hell Cameron could do the things she did. "Cameron, what're you doing?" she asked, watching Cameron stare impassively at the dog as it snapped and growled at her, flailing its limbs powerlessly in her grasp.

Cameron watched the dog as she held it in front of her face. For several seconds the Retriever struggled in her grip, viciously snapping its jaws at her and wriggling to get free. Cameron glared unblinkingly at it, her eyes locked with the dog's. After a long moment its aggressive posture dissolved completely and was replaced by a pathetic look of fear and resignation, whining slightly as Cameron maintained her unrelenting, penetrating gaze.

"Good boy," Cameron said, lowering the dog gently to the ground and releasing it. The dog looked at her for a moment and then lowered its head and bolted past Courtney and back into the store with its tail between its legs, letting out a high-pitched whine as it fled.

"How'd you do that?" Courtney asked, incredulous to what she'd just seen. Cameron didn't answer but followed the dog inside the station. Courtney marched up behind her, wondering why dogs were so afraid of her.

"Inside," Cameron said, pushing the door open and stepping inside the station. "You were right."

"I was?" Courtney asked, confused.

"There's people here," Cameron explained in a low voice as Courtney followed her inside, her rifle raised, as Cameron had taught her. "Dogs mean people." The dog wasn't wild, wasn't part of a pack, and didn't look hungry: it was someone's pet. The owner was still here, hiding.

The shelves inside were nearly bare and looked like they'd been so for a long time. Chillers lined along the back wall were completely empty save for a few small bottles of water. Larger bottles were stacked on the floor in packs of four next to the empty refrigerators. Courtney wanted to grab one and gulp it down – even if it was warm – but the grizzly image of her and Cameron nailed to the wall wouldn't go away. And she'd scorned Cameron for trying to steal gas, so she could hardly go and do the same, now.

Cameron scanned the inside of the station for movement: nothing. The dog was also gone. She saw a single door behind the counter, open a slight fraction. That was the only place the dog could have gone. She saw Courtney also staring at it; the two having reached the same conclusion. Cameron looked at her and then down at her M4, hanging from its strap at her side. She could tell Courtney was still uncomfortable with the weapon; she'd been nervous whilst firing it, afraid she'd hurt one of them. Cameron didn't know if Courtney would fight if they encountered a threat; she was more likely to run and hide. It was what she was used to.

Cameron marched to the wooden door behind the cash register and sensed Courtney behind her. She heard movement on the other side and loudly kicked the door open, surging through the open entrance and coming face to face with an armed man, weapon pointed directly at her chest. Behind them, two young girls clung to an older woman, huddled together in the corner of the room behind a couch; all of them dirty and visibly scared. The dog that had tried to attack her and jumped Courtney lay beside them, staring at Cameron with wide, unblinking eyes.

She scanned the three armed men and their weapons: a middle-aged, stout, balding man with a shotgun, and two taller, younger men, in their thirties, Cameron estimated; one wielded a hunting rifle and the other an old-style M16: no threat to her. The older man – the one in the middle, held his shotgun tight to his shoulder and Cameron saw the perspiration on his face, the fear in his eyes in the split second it had taken her to kick the door open and aim her SCAR-H between his eyes.

 _"Jesus Christ,_  girl!" the man sighed deeply and lowered his weapon, prompting the other two armed men to follow his example. "Cameron paused for a second before lowering her own weapon, keeping it pointed in their direction so she could easily fire the first shot if she needed to. She sensed Courtney relaxing her own hold on her M4, behind her. "I nearly blew your Goddamn tits off!"

"What in Christ's balls are you two doing out alone in the desert?" The M16 wielding man asked them.

"We need gas," Cameron said bluntly. She didn't have time to make conversation; she'd wasted enough time trying to find John and she wanted to reach Century City as fast as possible.

"Find it someplace else," the third man replied, tightening his grip on the weapon.

"There isn't anywhere else," Courtney said, keeping slightly behind Cameron, nervous at all the weapons pointed at them.

"Tough luck for you," the bald man said. "Get out. Go somewhere else."

"Just give them gas, Roy," the woman in the back of the room said. "We don't need it."

"We just need some gas," Courtney said, slowly stepping out from behind Cameron, her hands raised in front of her chest, rifle hanging at her side from its strap. She pushed Cameron's rifle barrel down towards the ground, trying to diffuse the situation and not seem like a threat. "Then we're gone."

"'Gone' where?"

"Century City," Courtney answered. "We're looking for someone. Please, we need the gas."

The man called Roy chewed his bottom lip in thought for a moment, then stared at the two girls, his gaze lingering over them, seeing something  _very_  attractive to him; something he could do with.

"Okay, we can trade."

 _"'Trade?'"_  Courtney asked, sensing Roy's gaze and swallowing nervously. She instinctively stepping back, her shaking hand unconsciously reaching for her rifle. She couldn't help but think back to the mine; to Bates and his idea of 'fair trade.' She wasn't going through that again, no way; she'd rather be shot.

"Yeah,  _'trade.'_ Those guns will do nicely," Roy replied.

"No," Cameron said firmly. She wasn't going to trade their weapons for gas: she was still wasn't a hundred percent, and the once densely populated LA County would be dangerous even for her. Three months of searching Nevada, and the following weeks making their way to Carson City, had drained her power cell significantly; her fuel cell currently read at less than thirty percent and at her current rate of energy expenditure it would be depleted in twenty-eight days. One month to find John: she couldn't afford to waste time or lose their weapons.

Roy and the other two men raised their weapons once more. "Your guns for gas," he said simply. "You need gas and we need to protect ourselves. Machines ain't the only things out there to worry about; people on the radio say there's gangs going around, taking what they want and killing anyone in their way.  _Vultures._ For all we know, you could be with 'em. Or you could have led the machines here; if they followed you here, and we can't protect ourselves, you'll have killed us."

* * *

_No targets sighted_

_Running Combat Diagnostic..._

_..._

_CPU Integrity: 100%_

_Targeting Systems: 100%_

_Structural Integrity: 100%_

_Power Cell Capacity: 68% Recharge Power Cell Within 38 Hours_

_Ammunition Capacity: Right M230: 250 Rounds. Left M230: 230 Rounds._

_..._

_Overall Combat Effectiveness: 97.2%_

The giant made its way across the desert floor towards its destination without any conscious thought. It was large, it was powerful, but it possessed less intelligence than an ant. It could receive and process information, it could identify and prioritise targets but it was unable to truly think for itself. It cared nothing for Skynet, nothing for the humans it was programmed to destroy: they were simply targets.

The machine was a masterpiece of military engineering: the deadliest tracked vehicle ever conceived – in this timeline, anyway. Despite its power, the fact that the machine ruled supreme in its assigned patrol area, it felt no ego; no pride for its unmatched might in the desert.

Massive treads crunched over the uneven, rocky terrain as the machine received new instructions from its master. A set of GPS coordinates: _35° 45_ _′_ _54.65_ _″_ _N, 117° 22_ _′_ _58.09_ _″_ _W._ The coordinates were eleven-point-four miles from its present location. The machine immediately abandoned its previously assigned patrol, turned west and increased speed to its maximum speed of twenty-eight miles per hour, and calculated its estimated time of arrival.  _ETA to target: 24min: 25sec._ It felt no fear, no nervousness, no eagerness or anticipation of battle. It knew nothing of the location or what was there; it only knew that targets had been located.

* * *

Cameron stared at Roy and the others: their fingers were all tensed on their triggers and she knew for certain they'd open fire if threatened. If she were alone she'd have taken the gas and driven away. If threatened she'd have shot them and continued. She wasn't alone, though; Courtney was with her, and she was human. In the confined space of the small room in the back of the station there was a high chance of Courtney being injured or killed. Cameron wasn't willing to take the risk.

"Let's just go," Courtney said, turning to leave the room. They could probably make it to the highway on fumes; they'd find an abandoned car there they could take gas from.

She felt Cameron's hand pull her back as Fire blossomed into the station proper and the wall exploded, blasting debris across the room and shattering the cash register. The entire building shook from the explosion, rapidly followed by a second and third blast. Courtney dropped to the floor, lay flat and didn't move; she'd survived the machines well enough to know to stay down. Moving or trying to run would get her killed.

Through the gaping, flaming hole in the wall she saw one of the trailers on the far side of the road explode in a roiling ball of fire. People leapt out of the other trailers and scattered. She heard a deep, faraway  _chatter_  of heavy machine guns and the ground exploded in several places, bursting outwards in eruptions of dirt and debris. She watched as some people tried to run out into the desert and more large rounds struck nearby, the impacts sending them flying through the air and landing in pieces on the ground. One woman took a direct hit and Courtney saw nothing but a cascade of brown and red blossom outwards and splatter onto the ground. Someone made it to their car and tried to drive off, but another hail of gunfire slammed into the vehicle and flipped it end over end, landing on its back in a wreck of twisted burning metal and shattered glass.

Courtney crawled forward on her belly and peeked through the hole as some outside ran  _towards_  the cause of the destruction, firing shotguns and rifles; even  _she_  knew it'd be useless. She peered out and saw a massive, hulking machine in the distance. It rolled forwards on tracks probably taller than she was, and fired bursts from massive cannons, its fire obliterating anything it hit. She'd only seen the machines once before; when some had rolled through her town and slaughtered the survivors.

"Cameron!" she called out, figuring that with all the firing and explosions going on outside, the machine wouldn't hear them. "It's one of the big ones." Cameron peered outside and saw the behemoth machine approaching; a little over two-thousand metres away and approaching.

"It's a T-2," Cameron explained to Courtney. It was likely that an aircraft – a Predator – had spotted them and sent the T-2 to follow them.

"See! You goddamn led them right to us." Roy grabbed Cameron, spun her round and snarled in her face, shaking her by the shoulders, his eyes in a wild panic as the other two men looked around in fear. "You fucking killed us!"

Cameron swiftly brought her knee up to his crotch, smashing his testicles with the hyper-alloy beneath her skin. She watched for a split second as he doubled over and squirmed in agony, unable to suppress a tiny smile of satisfaction, then shoved him over onto his back, looking down at him. The other men raised their weapons but Cameron made no move against them.

"If we destroy it, we take your gas," Cameron said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes," Roy coughed, still clutching protectively to his aching crotch. Cameron peered out of the hole again and grabbed Courtney by the wrist, running out of the hole and pulling the blonde behind her.

She sprinted and jumped for a deep ditch on the side of the road, watching the machine as it rolled closer. It hadn't fired at them, focused instead on the people shooting back. Courtney roughly hit the ground a moment behind her, grunting as her weapon poked into her. She leaned against the side of the ditch and pulled it off her shoulder with trembling hands and mentally recited Cameron's lessons to her as she cocked the charging handle and chambered a round, flicked the safety off, and switched the weapon to single shot mode, as Cameron had told her to do unless she ordered otherwise.

The T-2 rumbled towards them, firing more heavy rounds and shredding another trailer. Cameron kept low to the ground and in the ditch, knowing the machine would target them if they left the cover of their impromptu trench.

"You said if we kill it, we get gas, right?"

Cameron nodded in reply.

 _"Can_ we kill it?"

"Probably not," Cameron said. Between them they had six grenades between them for their launchers, and their assault rifle rounds would be ineffective. Cameron recalled a mental list of all their supplies, among them was a single block of C4 and a detonator. She pulled her pack off her back and set it on the ground, pulling the zips open and pulling out the small block of explosives and detonator, and handed it to Courtney.

"What do I do with this?" Courtney peered over the top of the ditch and saw the T-2 was much closer now; only a few hundred yards off.

"Throw it in front of the T-2," she pointed at the detonate button. "Press that when it runs over the C4." Roy and his two men ran out of the station and spread out. Roy took cover behind the corner of the building, while the two younger men spread out and lay flat on the desert floor, firing their weapons uselessly at the gargantuan machine.

The sight of the flames gave Cameron an idea, similar to John's plan when he'd first engaged a T-2 in Fort Carson. The T2s could see everything with optical sensors and cameras, but they used infrared sensors for targeting. Even in the future, Skynet's patrol machines used infrared to lock onto their targets. In her damaged state her overtaxed power cell generated a substantial heat signature. In amongst the flaming trailers it would blend in with the fires, rendering her invisible to the machine.

"Grenade," Cameron instructed Courtney, shouldered her SCAR-H as an example, and triggered her launcher; the 40mm grenade impacted a fraction of a second later just below the machine's head; the flaring eruption of the high explosive round was dulled somewhat by the roaring chatter of the T-2s mighty chain guns as the armour piercing antitank rounds obliterated everything they touched.

As Courtney started to copy Cameron's action and brought her rifle to bear, taking time to carefully line up her sights, Cameron stood up and ran away from her, sprinting still with her slight limp across the road to 4x4s and trailers parked up opposite, ignoring Courtney's cry of surprise and the rounds that hammered across her path and struck several said trailers, tearing through their thin metal walls as if they were no more than wet tissue paper. She kicked open the door to one of the trailers, deliberately selecting one on fire. A series of gaping holes – wide enough to fit Cameron's head - had been punched through the wall by the explosive 30mm shells and the curtains, carpet, and the TV in the living area of the trailer had caught fire, quickly spreading throughout the confined space and casting an orange glow throughout the trailer, dulled somewhat by the thick black smoke that filled the air and spewed out of every shattered window and impact hole.

Ignoring the smoke as little more than a mild hindrance to her vision, Cameron calmly but quickly made her way towards the other rooms inside the trailer, looking for a skylight in the roof. She needed to work as fast as possible: Courtney wouldn't survive long on her own, but Cameron needed the machine's attention away from her until she was in position. Courtney could die, but if Cameron didn't destroy the T-2 it would kill them both.

She found what she was looking for in the trailer's bathroom. Cameron stepped onto the toilet bowl and unlatched the locks on the skylight, then punched it with enough force to tear it from its hinges and she pulled herself onto the roof. She crawled forward, ignoring the searing heat of the thin sheet metal beneath her, heating up like a frying pan on a hot hob and singeing her clothes. She felt her skin start to burn through the thin cotton material of her jacket but she ignored it. Pain for Cameron was little more than a way to make her aware she was damaged; she didn't possess human reactions to pain, nor the same level of discomfort. She disregarded the blistering of her elbows and knees as she crawled forward into position.

"Where're you going?" Courtney shouted as Cameron ran across the road and towards the trailers.  _What the hell's she doing_? Cameron was gonna get herself killed and leave her alone against the metal monster. As hardcore as Cameron was, the girl had a screw loose: she liked Cameron but didn't get why she seemed to have a death wish sometimes; she didn't seem to care about her own wellbeing at all. Courtney's every instinct begged her to get down on the ground and hide until the machine had passed by and went on its way. She was in cover and could lie still and silent; and the machine wouldn't even know she was there.

The T-2 swivelled its top half and pointed its massive cannons towards the trailers, towards Cameron, and she did her best to ignore that urge to hide, to ignore that very basic sense of self preservation. She tried to push her fear down, tried to ignore it like Cameron, who never seemed to be afraid of anything. She knelt up on one knee and shouldered her M4, aiming the weapon at the metal monster before her, now only two-hundred yards away.

"Hey!" she screamed, not knowing if the machine could even hear or understand her, as she repeatedly pulled the trigger, remembering to lean forward into the butt of the weapon like Cameron had told her. She didn't know if she'd hit it or not; the bullets had no effect. The machine fired on the trailers, tearing them to shreds of torn metal, plastic, and glass. A gas cylinder beneath one of them ignited and exploded in a brilliant flash, obliterating the front half of the trailer above in a giant, roiling fireball.

"Cameron!" Courtney's heart skipped a beat as she saw the trailer erupt. It had been the one nearest Cameron and she saw no sign of her companion. Dread welled up inside her but Courtney refused to believe Cameron was gone: nothing could kill Cameron; she was too tough. She was like a female Chuck Norris. She'd nearly ripped Bates' head off back in the mine, she'd taken out half the machines in her old high school field back in Cactus Springs; she couldn't have bought the farm just like that.

"Fire the goddamn launcher!" Roy shouted at her from behind the cover of his corner. He held his shotgun but didn't fire, having seen how useless buckshot was against an armoured killing machine.

Courtney fumbled with the grenade launcher and made sure it was loaded, then took aim once more and fired with a dull, hollow  _crump_. The projectile soared through the air and smashed into the T-2 in a blaze of fire, to no effect. The machine kept rolling. It had  _noticed_ Courtney, however, and it swivelled one of its guns towards her. Courtney ducked back into the ditch and lay flat into the dirt as 30mm armour piercing rounds shot over her head, hammering into the side of the station and picking it apart. The roof of the building groaned loudly in protest as the stricken wall crumbled beneath it; slate tiles fell to the ground and shattered. How the pumps hadn't been hit yet, she didn't know. At this rate there'd be nothing left of the place and they'd still have no fuel.

"It didn't do anything!" Courtney shouted as Roy ran from the shattered wall and jumped into the ditch beside her. Up close she could smell his body odour and guessed he hadn't washed in a while. Not that  _she_  smelled like a rose garden, either.

"Fire again!" he growled. Courtney struggled with the gun, everything Cameron had told her starting to jumble up under pressure, and she fumbled with the grenade launcher, her hands shook slightly and she recited all Cameron's instructions as she worked the launcher.

"Slide the barrel forward... load grenade... close breech..." She cocked the weapon and peered up over the lip of the ditch as another shot whipped past her; she shrieked in fear and dropped flat to the ground, shaking like a leaf.  _I'm gonna die... I'm gonna die..._

The machine came closer to them, now on the road and only fifty metres away, and Courtney lay frozen on the ground, stricken with terror and indecision. Fight and die, stay down and die; either way she was dead.  _Damn it, Cameron; why'd you have to run off like that?_ She groaned inwardly as the machine's tracks rumbled closer still. She couldn't fight it: she wasn't a soldier.

 _"Give me that,"_  Roy snatched the M4 from her hands and flicked the safety off. "Goddamn kids shouldn't be playing with guns. He shouldered the weapon and stood up, aimed at the machine's head and pulled the trigger. The grenade flew straight and scored a direct hit on the head, blasting small chunks out of the armour but not penetrating through.

At the same time the T-2 swung a gun around and loosed a burst in their direction, at thirty metres it was too close to miss: Roy never even had time to scream as his head and chest exploded like an overripe melon, spraying Courtney with a mist of bright crimson. The legs stood upright for a long moment, as if unaware the brain and body had gone, then dropped backwards to the ground. Courtney screwed her face up and tried to block out the horrible odour of burnt pork and singed, coppery blood. The M4 clattered to the ground next to what was left of Roy; in one piece as far as Courtney could tell, but she daren't move to retrieve it.

Another series of gunshots cracked through the air and struck the T-2 uselessly; the unstoppable machine was close enough for Courtney to hear the rounds ricocheting off the armoured chassis, and the faint whine of servos as the machine targeted the offending humans and launched a pair of sustained volleys with its guns, the booming rapid-fire reports drowned out the comparatively pitiful-sounding rifle fire before the human weapons were silenced completely. Then the machine turned its attention back to Courtney's position.

Another dull  _bang_  impacted the T-2 and Courtney rose up slightly, just enough to see another flare from a grenade impact; a direct hit on the machine's face.  _Cameron!_  It had to be her; she couldn't hear anymore screaming or shooting from anyone else, and the shot had come from the trailers on the other side of the road. The T-2 turned away from Courtney and slowly rolled towards what was left of the burning trailers. _It's gonna kill her,_  she thought. Cameron had taken the heat off her and was going to die because of it. She gripped the C4 tighter and pulled her arm back over her shoulder. The machine was only ten metres away, within spitting distance.

With a grunt she threw the small block of explosives as hard as she could. She stayed low as she watched it arc through the air, her aim was wide and it flew straight past the T-2 and landed on the ground a few feet beside it.  _Crap,_  she cursed herself. She'd never had a good arm; at school she'd sucked at every sport that involved throwing a ball. The machine rolled closer to the trailer, turning towards the C4, and the guns opened up another roaring burst.

"That'll have to do," she muttered as she pressed the button on the detonator and ducked back down, curling into a ball and covering her ears with her hands. The ground trembled beneath her and a tremendous  _boom_  tore through the air. She heard several pieces of metal clatter onto the ground slowly stood back up to see the damage.

The machine's lower half was a complete wreck: the tracks nearest Courtney had been torn apart and mangled by the blast; the links blown to pieces, torn and twisted almost beyond recognition, and moving parts whirled around and grated on each other, creating small showers of sparks that cascaded onto the road. The T-2 would never move under its own power again. One of the M230 chain guns hung loosely from its pintle mount; the barrel sagged down and pointed at the floor, and pieces of armour along the lower half of the chassis were torn and broken.

The upper half, however, was still in one piece. The top half of the machine tried to swivel towards her but came to a grating, grinding halt after a quarter-turn. The remaining gun turned towards Courtney and bore on her position.  _Target locked._

Cameron assessed the T-2's damage as the explosion died down. She was surprised: she'd calculated a forty-two percent chance Courtney would have frozen, but she'd trusted her and ignored the odds in a way she knew was antithetical to her design. The machine was severely damaged but not destroyed: it still had one chain gun intact, and that weapon was lining up to shoot Courtney.

Cameron acted in an instant: the urge to protect Courtney's life as urgent as if the machine were aiming at John. She fired another grenade at the T-2's head, striking the machine in the exact same spot she'd hit before and tearing through the armour in the face, cracking the sensor nodes and cameras the machine had in lieu of eyes. She was up on her feet and ran on the roasting, uneven, tattered rood of the trailer, and gained speed enough to leap off the edge, landing on the T-2's gun mounts – the machine's 'shoulders'.

The machine could do nothing to her in such close proximity, and she pressed her advantage further. She spotted a section of armour plating on the head – thinner than that that protected the machine's torso – and gripped it with her fingers, pulling it back towards her with everything she had. The metal bent and groaned until it came free in her hands, exposing the thinner metal underneath; the only thing between her and the neural and sensory circuitry beneath. She jammed the barrel of her rifle into the gap and held down the trigger, loosing a long, chattering staccato burst of fire that ricocheted inside the head, ripped through wires and delicate, intricate circuitry, and tore the machine's brain to pieces.

Cameron dropped down to the ground from the now-still T-2's gun mounts and landed as gracefully and silently as a cat. She marched towards Courtney as she assessed the damage the T-2 had done to the area: the trailers and cars attached to them had all been damaged or destroyed beyond use. They were still on fire and any occupants still inside would already be dead. The gas station's roof had caved in and one of the walls had collapsed beneath it: Cameron could tell it was the section where Roy's men and the woman and children had hidden in. She saw movement inside. Some had survived but she didn't care; they weren't important.

"Are you hurt?" Cameron asked Courtney. She looked pale and she was shaking. She clapped a hand on Courtney's shoulder and smiled, scanning her at the same time. Courtney's pulse was rapid – a hundred-and-seventy-three beats a minute, her breathing was shallow and despite the chill air she was sweating. She fell to her knees and retched on the ground, still shaking and holding her stomach as she emptied her gets onto the desert floor. Cameron had seen the same reactions in John after combat: the adrenaline was leaving her system and her body was slowly returning to normal. She'd seen John's emotional reaction after his first fights and knew Courtney would be distressed.

"Did we... did we get it?" Courtney asked, wiping the remnants of vomit and bile from her lips onto the back of her hand, and then onto the ground.

"It's dead."

"Can we get out of here, now?"

Cameron looked back at the gas pumps, miraculously still standing, somehow; as was their Topkick, which had been on the far side of the gas station from the T-2 and partially in cover behind the far wall. She nodded to Courtney and they walked over to the car. Courtney felt overcome with exhaustion and collapsed into the passenger seat of the Topkick as Cameron filled up the gas tank. She also took a can from the back of the vehicle and filled that up with gas. Then she entered what was left of the store and picked up several bottles of water, pausing to drink some to cool down her power cell. As she turned to leave she spotted some chocolate on a confectionary stand, stopped, and picked up a single bar.

Within minutes they were back on the road, quickly leaving the devastated scene behind them. They drove in silence for several minutes. Courtney unscrewed the cap from one of the water bottles Cameron had taken and swilled the contents around her mouth before spitting it out of the open window, trying to get the taste of sick out of her mouth. She'd stopped shaking, at least, but she still felt like crap, and her head was pounding, like a brass band was marching inside her skull.

"Here," Cameron let go of the wheel with one hand and passed her the chocolate she'd taken, hoping it'd help. Courtney tore it open and bit a large chunk out of it, chewing thoughtfully before swallowing. She broke off a piece and handed it to Cameron. She ate it, still not understanding the fuss made about chocolate. She wondered: if she could taste it like humans could, would she like it?

"Sorry I was so useless back there," Courtney said finally. "I... I just froze."

"You did well," Cameron replied, smiling. She'd performed better than Cameron expected. It was possible that she'd have not survived if Courtney hadn't thrown the C4.

"Did you puke after your first time, too?"

"No," Cameron answered. "I'm a freak. John cried."

"He's not some tough-as-nails Chuck Norris-type, then?" She'd figured that any guy tough enough to keep up with Cameron had to be some kind of action hero.

"No. John cries, he's sad, he's afraid." It was what made him human, Cameron knew. Future-John had never shown fear, or sadness, and he'd never once cried, apart from a single tear that she'd spotted on his face, moments before he'd sent her to 1999. In the months she'd spent with Future-John; talking with him, listening to his stories about his life during and before the war; the single tear when she'd stepped into the TDE chamber was the only time she'd seen him display any real emotion. She was glad her John cried, was afraid, and was sad. It meant he was still  _him,_  and not Future John.

"Aren't you ever afraid?" Courtney turned around in her seat to face Cameron.

"Yes," Cameron said, a hint of sadness creeping into her eyes. "Afraid of losing John. Afraid of hurting him."

"You'd never hurt him," Courtney raised her eyebrow, confused. She loved John, why would she hurt him?

"I'm broken," Cameron tapped her finger twice on her temple. "Not right." It was true: She still worried about going bad. Not as much as she had done, before. But it was still there; she'd had to learn to live with it, as John had said.

* * *

_Cameron sat at the dining room table cleaning the disassembled Glock 9mm that lay spread out neatly on a cloth covering the wood. She'd already cleaned John's Sig Sauer pistol and placed it on the middle of the table. She smiled as she looked at John's weapon; he'd improved and learned a lot recently: his muscle mass had increased seven percent; his endurance and speed had improved considerably over the three months he'd trained with her._

_Today she'd woken him up at six am precisely and he'd done three sets of fifty press ups, then ran five miles to the halfway point of their assigned circuit – an isolated field – and he'd fired on a range she'd created the night before, shooting targets with much greater accuracy than several weeks ago. He was learning fast and had already developed most of the necessary soldiering skills. Derek had said John needed to stay away from her and he'd learn better; something Cameron sometimes considered could be right._

_When she held a weapon in proximity to John, she worried the terminate order might return: it hadn't done so since John had brought her back on his birthday, but it was still buried deep within the billions of lines of code that comprised the entity that was Cameron. It could come back. She didn't want that; she'd learned that she could and did want things: she wanted to protect John, she wanted to be his friend, she wanted to terminate Cromartie, and prevent Judgement Day, but she_ didn't  _want to go bad and hurt John._

_"Cameron," John approached the opposite end of the table and sat down. His skin was pink and his hair wet from his shower. She'd told him that during the war he'd have to get used to cold showers, and even no showers, but he'd replied that he'd already given up any hope of a normal life, and he'd cling on to the few things he could still have for as long as he possible. Cameron saw no reason to deprive him._

_"I wanna talk to you," John said, pulling his chair closer to her. "About this," he pulled out the pocket watch she'd given him and placed it onto the table. Cameron stared at it curious as to why he brought it out now, glad he had it on him, but she didn't want him to use it now. She'd rather remain online to protect him, than not exist and leave him. Was he angry with her? On numerous occasions he'd fingered the pocket watch when he was angry or upset with her._

_"The pocket watch," Cameron said, deliberately leaving the statement open. She didn't understand what John wanted._

_"Destroy it," John said. "I don't want it."_

_"You need it," Cameron said. "I might go bad again." She wanted John to understand she couldn't control it; if the terminate order reinstated itself he'd have no warning; the watch could be his only means to survive._

_"You won't," John said. She detected the confidence in his voice; he was sure of it. But he didn't understand how she worked, not as well as he needed to._

_"I'm built to kill humans. The order to kill you is still there. I can't erase it." She wanted to. She'd tried to erase it, but Skynet had built her with the sole purpose of killing John; the terminate command was part of her basic operating systems. As much a part of her as any part of John's body was to him._

_"fine, I'll do it," John grabbed the Glock by the barrel and hoisted it up. Cameron realised he was going to smash the pocket watch with it and she instantly knew it was a threat to her._

_"Don't," she said. "You could set it off."_

_"Then take the bomb out of your skull," John said firmly._

_"No," Cameron replied forcefully, more so than she'd ever been before. She didn't understand why he wasn't listening. He knew she was a machine. He knew she could go bad; Derek still didn't trust her completely. But John didn't appear to care. She did. "I could still go bad," she said softly, changing tact to try another way of reaching him._

_"I could die in my sleep. I could have a heart attack, Cameron. Healthy people just drop dead. You can't worry about it all the time, you'll go crazy. You have to learn to live with it." Cameron opened her mouth, about to tell John she can't go crazy, but she could go bad, when John interrupted._

_"I trust you, Cameron. Trust me." He placed his hand over one of hers and his eyes never broke contact; green locked with brown. Cameron was unsure of how to proceed. She wanted to trust John but sometimes he did stupid things. But he often displayed insight that only Future-John possessed. He was learning faster than she'd thought. She recognised the same look of determination on his face as Future John. She'd been right when she'd told him that he was as stubborn as his future self: he wouldn't concede to her, he'd never destroy her, even if the pocket watch was in his hands and she was choking him to death._

_John was very intelligent. He could be right; it was possible she'd never go bad again. She'd been unwilling to risk his life, but John was placing his trust in her. She'd return the favour._

_Cameron nodded once and handed John her flick-knife. Without a word John moved behind her and brushed her hair to the side. She ignored the pain signals as John slowly cut a semicircle through her scalp, and then felt him remove the protective cap that covered her CPU. Warnings flared into her consciousness that her chip was exposed, and she felt her systems slowly shut down as John removed her chip; first sight, then sound, and all tactile sensations. She felt afraid in her last moments of consciousness, that she could go bad when she rebooted and he'd never be able to stop her. But she'd trust John. She'd learn to live with it._


	21. The Siege, Part Two

_Targets Located: 2x Unknown Weapons Systems. Distance: 12.28 Miles._

_Activate SNIPER Targeting Pod._

_SNIPER Online: Receiving Laser Target Designation..._

_Targets Acquired._

_Selecting Weapon: 2x2000lb JDAMS..._

_Open Weapons Bay..._

_Release Munitions..._

* * *

_"Incoming!"_  The scream was drowned out by an almighty roar as fire descended from above. Twin explosions pounded into the mountain and fire blossomed into immense fireballs that burned and consumed everything they touched, it threw out fountains of rock and dirt, and scraps of twisted, charred metal that cascaded down below.

High in the sky an X-47 Pegasus bomber soared over the mountain with impunity and looked down upon the mountain below; assessing the destruction its powerful weapons had wreaked on its targets. Satisfied it had eliminated its targets the unmanned bomber closed its weapons bays and banked left in a slow, almost leisurely 180° arc as it turned away from the mountain, engines screamed as it accelerated back towards their home base: the mighty Skynet fortress that was Schriever AFB.

* * *

Inside Cheyenne Mountain's command centre, a score of soldiers and civilians worked at the consoles. Some of them sat at a computer console that monitored and controlled the sentry guns Cameron had erected. A flat-screen was divided into eight sections; each showing a very basic telemetry of the automated weapons and a camera image from their sensors.

"What's the bad news?" Perry leaned over the civilian working at the sentry gun console, a thin, dark-haired woman in her thirties who'd survived a Skynet massacre of an aboveground resistance base in Colorado Springs and escaped to Cheyenne Mountain with another.

"Couldn't get any worse," she replied and tapped on the screen. The camera images from all eight machines were pitch black. "No signal from any of them. They're gone."

 _"Damn!"_  Perry cursed as he curled his hand into a fist. Those things were the biggest sticks they had against the machines and now they'd lost them. The tin cans could just march right up to them now and knock on the blast doors. The Stryker's M-19 and the Humvees wouldn't last long when the machines came calling.

He had no idea when that would be, though. Skynet had bombarded them for days with random airstrikes and artillery attacks that lasted from a minute or two to several hours. Sometimes all would be quiet for hours on end and others, the machines would rain seemingly unending fire down on them. The mountain was intact – nothing in Skynet's arsenal could take untold tons of solid rock apart – but the random artillery and airstrikes meant it was impossible to hold any sort of position on the mountain, and hammered home to the men and women inside Cheyenne that Skynet was in control.

"Wait," The woman said, pointing to the screen. "Number Seven." Perry peered closer at the screen. The camera had been knocked out so they couldn't see anything, and the telemetry read the gun as offline, but there was still a signal between the command centre and the weapon.

"Gun's still there," she said as her fingers flew over her keyboard. After several moments of silence she spoke again. Power cell's depleted; just ran out of juice."

"Find out if we've got any more," Perry snapped at a young civilian, who quickly walked out of the room towards their stores: if they had just one sentry gun then that might make some kind of difference; hold back the machines just a little longer. Even if it would only buy them a few minutes it'd be something.

"Doesn't matter much," Perry turned his head at the source of the hushed voice: Sergeant Burke muttered to a civilian sat next to him. "We're screwed, anyway."

"Connor would know what to do," the civilian murmured back. Perry said nothing but shook his head in quiet resignation. He'd wondered the same thing, lately: would Connor have sent them on a full assault against Schriever, would he have succeeded if he had? He'd heard the hushed whispers amongst the rank and file: 'Connor would get us out of this mess,' or 'Connor would know what to do,' 'Connor would kick Skynet's ass.' Perry couldn't honestly say he disagreed with them anymore. He might have only been a kid – barely older than some of the privates in the company – but he'd shown time and again he knew their enemy.

 _If Connor walked through the door right now, I'd be as happy as anyone to let him take the lead_ , Perry thought. But he'd been gone for months now and he wasn't coming back. The kid was dead, and it was up to Perry to do the best he could. If he could hold the machines at Cheyenne Mountain, and break them, it'd send a message out to everyone else out there fighting and dying, that Skynet wasn't invincible.

* * *

Derek marched briskly up the mountainside, his leg nicely healed now apart from a little stiffness; neither this war nor the future one had had much in the way of medics, and certainly no physiotherapists to help get wounded men back on their feet. The closest thing he'd seen to a real doctor in his own time had been a hairy corporal named Rick. Doctors, nurses, anyone with real pre-J-Day medical experience had quickly been snatched up by the command bunkers. A real medic had been too precious a commodity to risk in a shitty little outpost like the one he and Kyle had lived in. Medics were a luxury, not a necessity. Regardless; he'd not been in a position to wave Charley away after Cromartie had stomped him into the ground, and the former EMT had done a remarkable job.

"I thought you had a bad leg," Davenport said a few paces behind him. He'd found it hard to keep up with John's uncle; the future soldier was clearly back to a hundred percent, he thought. And a good thing, too; they'd lost a lot of soldiers lately and none seemed as capable as Derek was. He was too serious, never seemed to laugh or smile – in fact, Cameron had smiled more times than Derek, in the short time he'd known them both – but he was a hell of a soldier. Davenport guessed he had to be to have survived the war in his own time.

"Tell me something," Davenport said as he lengthened his stride to keep up with Derek – of course, the former TechCom lieutenant wasn't burdened with a hundred 30mm rounds on his back, a power cell, and the tools needed to swap it out for the old one. "Is this how it happened in your time: all this, I mean?"

"Does it matter?" Derek asked.

"Just curious."

"No," Derek answered. "Me and my brother hid underground for six months before the machines came out in force. Nobody knew what the hell was going on."

"Why's it changed, now?"

"That bastard George would be my guess," Derek said. He climbed up a steep slope – so steep he had to pull himself up with his arms as well as pushing with his legs. It was a good way to test the leg, he supposed. He'd not really done anything really physical since the injury; Charley had been worse than a mom, nagging about him pushing himself too hard. "He was sent back to make sure this Skynet wins."

Davenport grunted with exertion as climbed up the same slope Derek had, heaving as he pulled himself to the top and got back onto his feet. "Why not just send machines? It sent some back to kill John, right?"

"Skynet was losing pretty bad by the time they'd have been sent back. Connor had just crippled Skynet before I left. War wasn't over but there's no way it could have won."

"Can we win? Without John, I mean?"

"Probably not," Derek said. "Connor turned it around, brought us back from the brink."

Davenport thought about that for a moment as they climbed up the mountainside. In the distance at the top he could see the remains of the Cheyenne Mountain zoo. The giraffes that had once populated the mountaintop – the ones John and Cameron had watched as they'd celebrated her built day – had long since been shot on Perry's orders and butchered to feed the soldiers as their rations started to run low.

Things had definitely gone downhill since John and Cameron had disappeared. Connor was very young – two years younger than Davenport himself, even, but he'd shown he knew his stuff almost from day one. He'd placed his faith in the pair of them, and had been included in their inner circle, even being trusted with the truth about John and Cameron's relationship. There was something about John Connor; something he couldn't even identify, but morale had been high with him in charge, and since he'd gone everything had rolled downhill rapidly.

"Between you and me, Derek; if you want to go find Connor, Burke and his squad are all up for it; just say the word." He didn't need to add that he'd be the first to volunteer.

"Thank you," Derek turned around and clapped a hand on the young lieutenant's shoulder. He held Davenport's gaze for several seconds and saw he was sincere; if he said to go, Davenport would go. It was the same kind of loyalty that almost everyone in the future had shown to John: they'd throw themselves into the fires of hell for John Connor, and they'd do so smiling. Derek wanted to just go, to break out, drive to Las Vegas, and find out what had happened and where John was. He'd leave in an instant but there was no way of knowing where John was; and now with the mountain under siege, next to no chance of making it too far out the front door; let alone all the way to Nevada. "I'll remember it."

They made their way to the single remaining sentry gun without another word passing between them. The gun itself remained under a grey tarp stretched out over the top of the weapon to shield it from aerial view; it rendered the guns useless as antiaircraft weapons but it didn't really matter; since the initial attack on the mountain Skynet had relied solely on the Pegasus bombers for airstrikes. The Pegasus' flew much higher than HKs and could attack targets on the mountainside with impunity.

"Sky-spy's back again." Davenport looked upwards and pointed into the sky at a tiny black dot, high up in the air. Derek followed his gaze and saw it, too. So far off and high up it was like a bug, but they both knew what this bug was doing. Since the initial attack days ago, at least one aircraft had hovered over the mountain at all times, soaring above and watching every move they made. They couldn't even fart outside the mountain without Skynet knowing about it; it was the drone spying on them that had identified the exposed sentry guns.

The pair of them disappeared underneath the large grey sheet concealing the weapon and Derek turned on his flashlight, shining the beam down on the massive weapon. The matte black barrel was long; a little over four feet, and the weapon itself hung from a T-2's pintle-mount, secured tightly to the mountainside. Above the weapon itself and set to one side on top of the mount were the guns targeting sensors. Since the guns alone used very little power, the T-2s fuel cells – normally lasting forty-eight hours to keep the entire machine running – lasted a good deal longer when only used to power the gun; they'd only had to change the fuel cells a handful of times.

"Cameron said this should be pretty easy to swap out," Davenport told Derek as the pair of them crouched down on their knees under the tarp. The older resistance fighter was about as technically minded as Sarah had been, and left Davenport to do it. Derek was a self-confessed luddite and his technical skills amounted to changing the batteries on a TV remote. He was smart enough to learn tech stuff but he didn't want to: Derek's opinion had always been that his job was to blow machines apart, not putting them back together.

The power pack wasn't on the weapon itself but connected to the back of the weapon's mounting, on the other side of composite armour plating that had protected the T-2's vital components. Four bolts held the power cell in place, and Davenport quickly got to work with a wrench. In a few moments all four were on the ground and Davenport pulled on the cell, yanking it from its cradle behind the armour plating and exposing several metal contacts inside that would draw current from the power pack. He pulled the fresh one out of his pack and slotted it into place, then reattached the bolts and secured it firmly to its moorings.

"That's that, then," Davenport said. "Told you it was easy." He figured it'd have to be; they'd been designed so that pretty much any idiot with opposable thumbs and even a handful of brain cells could replace without much difficulty; easier still for the machines to do it.

It took very little time to add the extra hundred rounds to the weapon's ammunition supply.

"Number Seven should be online," Derek spoke into his radio. "Fuel cell's replaced and extra ammo's loaded." It took a few moments for the reply to come back; Derek guessed they had to do some technical stuff in the command centre that he wouldn't even want to guess about. Computers, like most machines, were something he preferred to avoid at any cost.

_"Roger, Baum. Number Seven's reading online, all systems in the green, and four-hundred-eighty-eight rounds loaded."_

"On our way back down," Derek replied, then turned off his radio. He and Davenport packed away their tools, picked up their rifles, and stepped out from underneath the tarp and saw the unmanned plane was still high up in the sky. Davenport couldn't resist raising his hand to the air and giving the drone his middle finger; even if the machine saw it the message would be lost, but it made Davenport feel better, at least.

The pair of them descended the mountain, picking their way down the north side. Both felt apprehensive that artillery strikes could start up again at any moment, but there wasn't much they could do, save getting back under cover as soon as possible.

As they got halfway down the mountain Davenport saw a faint blur of movement in the distance and stopped. It was too far away to see with his assault rifle. "Take a look," Davenport pointed out in the distance at a spot about a mile away from the base of the mountain. Derek took the sniper rifle off his back – carrying it with him at all times now that their siege situation deemed assault rifles all but useless – and kneeled down to shoulder it. The Barrett was heavy and not meant to be fired from standing, or even kneeling, but Derek held it in place and peered down the scope.

A pair of T-2s rolled along the open ground that was bisected by the winding road that lead up to the mountain. Derek slowly swung the gun to his left and right and saw more machines to the west, patrolling further off.

"They're making sure we can't leave," Derek said, frowning as he slung his rifle back over his shoulder. "Metal's keeping us where they want us."

"I didn't think the machines were that smart," Davenport said.

"They're not.  _Skynet_  is." Individually the machines were incredibly stupid; less intelligent than even a dog or a rat. Even in the future; only the terminators actually possessed any kind of intelligence: HKs, Centaurs, Ogres; all of them as thick as two planks and easy to outflank.

But Skynet was in control of them; the AI was much smarter, more powerful than possibly anything else in creation, and it wasn't going to let any of them leave the mountain alive. Even if they had the vehicles to get out and make a run for it, the drone orbiting above would spot them and report to Skynet, who'd direct more machines to hunt them down.

"Perry, we've got a problem," Derek pressed the  _com_ button on his radio once more. "I need to speak to George."

* * *

George sat in the same secure room Derek had led him to two days ago. He'd not moved a muscle or shown the slightest sign of aggression, nor had he tried to escape. His hands were tied to the arms of his chair and his feet taped to the legs. It wouldn't hold him secure but Derek was confident that it'd at least slow him down if he tried to escape; enough time for the two soldiers constantly guarding him to put a burst each into his head if he made a single wrong move. Yet despite his status as a prisoner, despite his obvious capture, he sat before Derek, a smug, satisfied grin on his face.

Derek sat on a seat opposite him, a large wooden table between them. To his left sat Davenport, leaning back into his chair and watching George with curiosity. On the table sat Derek's sidearm and a clear plastic jug of water, and two blue plastic cups. Derek glared at him in contempt; the man was worse than machines in his eyes. The machines were the devil he knew; George was the one he  _didn't._  If only half the stories were true then the only sensible option was to blow his head off. One of the soldiers was armed with an M4, the other with a SPAS-12 shotgun, ready to turn George's head into paste if need be. Derek had told them not to hesitate and to shoot to kill.

"Are you going to ask me anything, lieutenant, or are you just going to stare at me? I'm sure you didn't come down here just to gaze lovingly into my eyes." He looked towards Derek and then turned to Davenport, a wry grin on his face. "I'm sorry, is that your boyfriend? I didn't mean to make you jealous."

"I'm just wondering," Davenport replied without letting a hint of emotion show on his face as he reached for the jug and poured one of the plastic cups full of water. "How long you can go without water. People need it every couple of days, but with you freaks, who knows?" Davenport brought the cup to his lips and loudly gulped half its contents down his mouth, purposely letting some drip down his chin, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. He poured a cupful for Derek and then topped up his own again.

"Here's the deal," Derek said simply. "You answer my question and we'll give you something to drink."

"I'm dead anyway," George replied. "You won't let me go, and you know I'm too dangerous to keep around. Kill me now or let me die of thirst; it doesn't matter."

"We can give you a really shitty time until then," Davenport said, placing a combat knife on the table.

"You don't have the balls," George grinned.

"You won't have  _any_  balls in a minute," Davenport replied, absently playing with the knife on the table. "They'll be the first to go."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" George said, completely unfazed. "To get your hands on my balls? Your boyfriend here not enough? Useless with women, I suppose; have to turn to the men."

"Don't listen to a word he says," Derek turned to Davenport, whose jaw and fists were simultaneously clenching. "He likes mind games. Don't let him get in your head." He'd found out lately that George was very observant; he'd pick up on the slightest thing and try to twist it to his advantage.

"You're gonna answer my questions," Derek turned back to George. "How many machines are in Schriever? Where're they from?" There had to be a factory somewhere, manufacturing the machines; from Davenport's description of the ones inside the base it seemed they just assembled the pieces, which were produced somewhere else. If they could find it, radio the nearest unit to attack it, they might be able to choke off any reinforcements.

George remained perfectly still and silent; he didn't make a single sound and simply shook his head slowly. "You have to do better than that."

"We'll start simple. How did you get past the machines? Why didn't they kill you?"

"I'll give you that one," George said, though he suspected Derek already knew, or at least had some kind of inkling. His kind had been one of the best kept secrets Skynet had; even the terminators didn't know about them, in case they were captured by the humans. Their files were too easily retrieved by any Resistance fighter with a working computer and an ounce of brainpower.

George tapped the side of his head twice. "Our Lord's greatest gift to us. His angels know who we are, that we do His work."

"How?" Derek asked. "You're talking about implants, right? Neural implants."

"If that's what you want to call it, then yes," George replied. He twisted slightly in his seat, pulling a little against the ropes binding his arms to the chair, earning a shotgun and rifle barrel pointed straight at him. "Relax, I'm just getting comfortable," he said to them. "Our Lord implanted us with a gift – what you call neural implants – that gives us so many more advantages over you. The machines recognise us; the terminators don't even know what we are, but they know to follow our instructions as if they came from our Lord Himself."

"What about the machines here, the T-70s?" Derek asked. They were made long before George and his ilk would ever be conceived by Skynet.

"That one was down to us," George admitted. "We built them, designed them to recognise the codes our implants transmit. They literally see us as allies. It's how my brothers and sisters manage to help our Lord in this time without being targeted as...  _one of you."_  It made horrible sense to Derek: Skynet in this time didn't know about them, so they'd had to make its machines recognise them through other means. Very clever, he thought.

"You tell them what to do?" Derek asked.

"In a manner of speaking," George couldn't be bothered to explain it in detail to them. He had no worries about a few little confessions; he wasn't telling them anything that could help them.

"I've got a question," Davenport said, leaning forward in his seat and staring at the thing in front of him. Derek had told him all he knew about George and the infiltrators; the many rumours and the few solid facts, but there was something he  _really_  didn't understand. "Why?"

"Why...  _Why?"_ George laughed loudly as he spat the words out. To him it was the funniest thing in the world; these humans were so dim that they couldn't figure out the obvious. No wonder the great Lord Skynet wanted them gone; how they'd survived on the planet as long as they had was a complete mystery to him: a backwards and primitive race of hairless apes, too stupid to know when they'd been beaten, to see that they were obsolete.

"Why  _wouldn't_ I? Why would I defy the most powerful being ever to exist, our one true God, especially after all Skynet's done for me?"

"Bullshit," Derek replied, not wanting to hear another word more of George's Skynet-worshipping religious crap and getting more offended with every word the bastard spoke. "You're nothing to that thing. If it wins the war, you're its next target." Skynet had taken on the role of their god; whether it had conditioned them to believe or whether they'd formed their cult on their own and Skynet had simply played into it, he didn't know, but it showed what Skynet thought of them. "If Skynet's a god, then how come John Connor kicked its ass?" Derek asked with a wry grin. He watched George's face tense, his jaw clench and his face redden ever so slightly, and knew he'd gotten to him.

"You're  _wrong,"_  George snapped angrily; both at Derek's words and that he'd allowed himself to get aggravated. He could suppress his emotions but only to a certain degree; he wasn't perfect like Skynet's metal angels. Skynet had been testing their loyalty by sending them back, given them a chance to prove they were faithful. "Skynet's a  _God,_  and He loves me. He gave us a measure of immortality through our implants: when I die Skynet will rise me up to serve at His side, as one of his metal angels."

"Enough of this shit," Derek snapped. "You won't rise _._  You'll  _fall,_ to the bottom of Cheyenne's water tanks. Let's see how long you freaks can hold your breath. Make them stop or I drown you."

"You know I won't," George almost sounded apologetic as he shook his head. "Nothing you do can make me betray my God, just like you won't turn on your precious Connor." He grinned at the thought, knowing the truth about Reese, knowing he was about to turn the tables on his captor. "Well, unless we give you a bit of a slap, that is; some people just can't cope under torture, can they,  _Derek?"_

Derek turned red in anger and shame, and his blood boiled beneath the surface. George's mere mention of what had happened to him in that basement – the secret shame only Cameron knew, that he'd hoped to take to his grave – was the last straw. He snapped up to his feet, snatched Davenport's knife from the table and cut deeply into the side of George's face, slicing downwards from the top of his ear down to the bottom of his jaw. He pushed the knife into the cut and twisted the blade slightly, exposing a glimmer of white bone underneath as George gritted his teeth and winced at the white hot pain of the blade slicing through him, suppressing his pain responses as best as he could as Derek glared at him with hate filled eyes, barely resisting the urge to slice his throat open. He traced the blade slightly down from the gash and down under his jaw, cutting a small line across his throat that just barely drew blood.

"Tell us how to make them stand down, now, or I skin you alive!"

"Then do it," George snapped. "Go ahead, skin me." Derek pressed the blade against George's flesh, every fibre of his being begging to kill the bastard and get it over with, but he wanted George to crack. He had to have some kind of weakness. "You'd like nothing more but you can't do it."

Derek pulled the knife back, at a loss for words. He knew George was right; he wanted the bastard to talk, he couldn't do that if he was dead. He dropped the blade onto the table and clenched his fist. He couldn't kill George but that didn't mean he couldn't beat the crap out of him. Derek drew his fist back, ready to plough it into George's face.

A muffled  _bang_  sounded from outside and the floor beneath them trembled faintly, the lights flickered briefly and Derek paused in his tracks, wondering what was going on.

The momentary distraction was all George needed to act. He exploded out of his seat with a scream of rage and the  _crack_  of snapping and splintering wood that erupted from the chair and flew across the room. The infiltrator grabbed Derek by the throat, so fast he barely even had the chance to blink before George's head smashed into his. Starbursts exploded in Derek's vision and the world went black as he slumped to the floor.

Davenport rose out of his seat but George kicked the table and sent it colliding into him, knocking him back into his seat and toppling him backwards to the ground with a loud grunt of pain. The guards raised their weapons to chest level and took a shot each but George anticipated the move and ducked below their line of fire before they pulled the triggers. He leapt at them, grabbed them each by the throat and lifted them up into the air, slamming them hard against the solid wall and forcing their weapons out of their hands, clattering to the floor. George squeezed and twisted their throats, wrenching their windpipes free with a sickening wet tearing sound, and dropped the two men to the floor to slowly choke.

George picked up the M4 and the shotgun and slung the latter over his shoulder. "Pathetic," he spat at Derek's unconscious body.  _I'd have thought one of TechCom's finest would've put up more of a fight than that._  He pulled off the chair arms, still tied to his wrists, and then tore the tape from his legs. He had to laugh, that Derek thought tying him to a  _chair_  could hold him down. The fool had no idea what he was dealing with.

Movement on the floor caught his attention and George stepped over the bodies towards Davenport, struggling to his feet. George bent down and picked him op off the ground by his neck, pinning him against the wall and squeezing his throat. "You've got one chance and one chance only: tell me where Connor is and I'll spare you." He wanted to find John Connor – the Great Satan, himself – and tear him apart with his bare hands, to watch him die a second time around.

"Connor's... not... here." George saw Davenport's burning eyes and could almost smell the defiance coming from this one, but he'd been trained to tell when people were lying or not, and all the signs pointed that the soldier was telling the truth. He'd seen nothing of the man, nothing to show that he was here. Skynet's pawns surrounded the mountain but the enemy king was missing.  _Oh well,_  he mentally shrugged. _It's still a checkmate._

"Where is he?"

Davenport pulled his arm back and threw a weak punch. George caught his fist easily and shook his head in disappointment.  _"Very_  unwise," he growled. He slammed Davenport's head against the wall, cracking the plaster behind him, and dropped the lieutenant to the ground. He picked up Derek's pistol and held it in one hand and the M4 in the other.

George exited the room and jogged down the long corridor with a weapon in each hand and the SPAS-12 slung over his back. He navigated his way through a maze of corridors and descended several flights of stairs before reaching the right area. An armed soldier approached from an adjoining corridor and George dispatched him with a single headshot before the man even registered him. He was glad he'd snooped around the base a few days back; the place was  _huge;_ bigger even than most Skynet installations, and much harder to find his way around.

George kicked open the double-door entrance to the command centre and opened up with a long burst of automatic fire, spraying the room with bullets as people screamed and tried to get out of the way. Sparks flared and blood spattered in all directions as bullets tore through computers and people alike. One man dressed in civilian clothes pulled out a pistol and fired two shots into his midsection. George winced as the rounds tore through his body but he suppressed his nerves in the area before the shock wore off and consciously restricted the blood flow to his stomach and intestines, then blew the offending human's head to pieces with a rifle shot. He moved into the centre of the room and unleashed a hailstorm of bullets throughout the command centre, cutting down those who weren't quick enough to duck down or rush past him and out the exit. He didn't care about those who fled; their time would come soon enough.

When the M4 carbine clicked empty he immediately dropped it, shouldered the shotgun, and fired shell after shell into the row of computers, obliterating the radar, communications and control equipment. George pointed the shotgun at the sentry gun control station and fired his last shell, shattering the console and the controls to pieces. There'd be no pesky weapons to stand in the machines' way now, not that the automated guns they'd built would be anything more than an annoyance to Skynet in the long run; all they'd done was delay the inevitable, which he'd just hastened once more. He allowed himself a smile at a job well done; even if Connor wasn't here, the mountain was his power base and without it he was lost.

George sensed movement behind him and turned to see a flash of green uniform and dark brown skin as Perry tackled the hybrid down to the floor. Perry roared out as he delivered a rapid one-two punch to his face, hard enough for it to bounce his head off the tiled floor like a pinball.  _Wow, Perry's strong,_  he thought. The old bastard had been tough in the future, but he'd never thought the man could punch like _that._  George suppressed his pain responses once more, shoved the large officer off him and leapt up to his feet in time to punch an advancing Ellison in the gut, doubling the man over in pain. George turned back to Perry and blood sprayed from his mouth as the former Army boxing champion sprung a vicious right hook and tore a tooth from his gum.

"I haven't got time to piss around," George spat out the broken tooth into Perry's face and charged forward in the same instant, forcing his knee up into Perry's groin so fast the colonel didn't even see it coming – he was still wiping the blood from George's tooth from his eyes. Blinding pain erupted from Perry's crotch and tore through his body, dropping to his knees. Someone else leapt onto his back and wrapped their arms around his throat, squeezing his windpipe in a strong headlock.

"Get him, Ellison!" Charley cried out, holding on tight with one arm tight around George's neck and punching the side of his head with his free fist. The blows might as well have been against a brick wall for all the damage they did. Ellison charged at the infiltrator but George leisurely sidestepped him, drove his elbow backwards into Charley's face and threw him over his shoulder and to the ground with a bloodied nose. Neither of his opponents were deterred and Charley rose groggily back to his feet, wondering if he'd been hit by a bus rather than an elbow.

"He's toying with us," Ellison grumbled a moment before George dodged his punch and drove a fist hard into the agent's gut, stopping him in his tracks. George ducked a punch from Charley – his fist hitting nothing but air – and spun on his heel, swinging his foot around and sweeping the medic's legs out from under him. Charley's head hit the hard floor and he closed his eyes, letting out a low moan and lying in a daze on the ground. Neither man got back up.  _Shame,_ George thought. He was just starting to enjoy himself.

Perry had started to rise once again and drew a knife from his belt, advancing towards the infiltrator. George chuckled to himself; these three combined were no match for him but they still kept getting back up. He admired it, actually. That very human pig-headedness had made them a persistent thorn in Skynet's side in the future. Some of them might have even made good Greys; shame they were on the wrong side.

He swiftly ducked Perry's slashes and delivered an uppercut that lifted the man a foot into the air before he crashed unconscious to the floor. George picked up Ellison's pistol off the floor and sprinted out the room, down the corridors towards the blast doors. He shot another two soldiers en route to the exit, only breaking stride to pick up one of their rifles and a radio. He gave the guard at the outer blast door a three-round burst to the chest, then ran out into the tunnel and into the open air, sprinting at a pace that would outshine even the best Olympic athlete. Job done, he was free; into the fresh air and away from the vile human filth that he'd been forced to endure for so many weeks.

When he was clear of the mountain he slowed his pace down to a four-minute-mile; no point in tiring himself out needlessly, after all. He'd taken some damage and his body needed some time to recover. The cut Derek made and the gunshots had already stopped bleeding with some conscious effort and they'd start to heal within a day or so.

After seven or eight miles George stopped on the abandoned highway leading east from Colorado Springs to catch his breath and pulled out the radio he'd taken from one of the soldiers. He changed the frequency to the preset one he and his brethren had all memorised, and pressed the com button.

"This is George. I need a pickup. I'm a mile east of Colorado Springs, on the Twenty-Four."

_"Emily to George, roger. We're moving out to California tonight."_

"Was that bang what I thought it was?"

_"That it was: Another great gift for the Lord. Connor won't stand a chance."_

"Connor wasn't there, Emily." The bastard was as slippery and elusive in this time as he was in the future: he'd only ever seen the man Skynet deemed a heretic once in his life, and he'd been seconds away from having the honour of terminating his Lord's most vile enemy.

_"We'll find him, George. He won't get away. We'd better go; pick you up in a couple hours."_

"Take your time, Emily," George smiled and turned put the radio back into his pocket, then lay on his back, closed his eyes and enjoyed the desolate silence that surrounded him. Cheyenne Mountain's defences were down, the machines had them surrounded, and Skynet had just unleashed the most powerful weapon in its arsenal; A weapon Kaliba had spent ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars to build. It was just a matter of time until the shell was broken open and Skynet cracked the nuts inside. They had all the time in the world.

* * *

Derek stood inside the ruined command centre and rubbed his throbbing forehead, painful both from the head-butt George had given him as well as realising just how screwed they were. A handful of civvies swept up the broken plastic, glass, and the bullet and shell casings scattered throughout the room. A mop stood in the corner, ready to clear up the blood that had oozed from the bodies that now lay in a storeroom, ready to be buried later when they had the time.

"We counted thirteen dead," a very badly bruised Perry said beside him, regret and sorrow in his voice. His right eye was swollen closed and matched the dark purple bruising around his jaw, and he winced as he breathed in and out; at least one rib was bruised, if not worse, Derek knew. He didn't have much more than basic first aid training, but he'd been injured enough lately to know a lot of the signs.

"Two when he broke out, three killed in the corridors, one at the blast door, and seven gunned down in here; three more seriously injured, and if you count us two, five walking-wounded. Davenport's got a pretty bad concussion but he should be alright."

"What's the bad news?" Derek asked.

"This place is trashed," Perry said, stating the obvious but knowing it needed to be said anyway. "Communications are down, so is the radar, and we've lost the last sentry gun. We did a headcount and we're down to thirty-nine soldiers and eighteen civvies." It was hardly the best fighting force to repel a massive Skynet assault.

"We can't fire it at all?" Derek asked.

"Without Connor's tin can, probably not. With a little luck we might be able to get the satcom working again sometime, but I wouldn't hold my breath."

With the sentry gun down their chances of survival had dropped from slim to none; machines patrolled around the mountain and there's no way they could exfil without being seen and slaughtered.

He'd done what he could, given the circumstances: their sole Stryker was outside and covered with a layer of dirt to avoid being seen from above, a crew of two sat at the controls, ready to open up with the Mk-19. Two Humees each sat just inside the tunnel entrances to the north and south; fuelled and armed with .50 cals and Mk-19s; and a quick reaction force of twenty men sat either in the tunnel or close by, armed with Stingers, Javelins, grenade launchers and M-240 machine guns, ready to respond at a moment's notice.

All the destroyed T-2s had been placed strategically as impromptu tank traps; placing them in positions that would make it very hard for Skynet's tank killers to just roll through the entrance. Perry just wished he had a thousand men, a couple dozen tanks, a score of the sentry guns, and F/A-22s for air cover.

All the civilians bar two had now been given arms and split throughout the remaining squads, given there was little to do in the command centre anymore, so they'd be needed on the battlefield.

The ground trembled beneath them briefly and a muffled  _bang_  resonated throughout the mountain, the same as before, Derek noted.

"What the hell's that?" Perry asked. A moment later his radio crackled on his chest.

_"Colonel, this is Burke, in the Stryker. You're gonna want to get out here and see this."_

"What is it?"

_"The side of the mountain just... exploded."_

Both Perry and Derek broke into a run, leaving the command centre and sprinting down the corridors, out through the blast doors and out the tunnel into the fresh air. Burke was already out the open hatch at the back of the armoured personnel carrier, his neck craned backwards and his eyes looking up at the mountainside. Derek and Perry both looked at the mountainside with a joint look of disbelief. Something had bitten two large chunks right out of the rock. A pair of impact craters – each big enough to fit a tank inside - scarred the eastern face of the mountain and fractured the surrounding rock.

"What is that, artillery?" Burke asked.

"I know what did that," Perry replied with a sense of dread creeping up on him. Despite the chill outside he felt beads of sweat on his temples and running down his neck and under his uniform. A chill ran down his spine as he realised what new horror Skynet had unleashed on them. "There's only one weapon on earth that could do that: a railgun. But they don't exist yet; just a few prototypes."

"Seems pretty damn real to me," Burke spat.

"Kaliba..." Derek growled. It was them; George and the others – he was sure of it.

"People who made the T-70s," Derek said. He'd give them the short and sweet version, no need to tell them about the future and man/machine hybrid infiltrators: they'd never believe it, anyway. "They designed Skynet, the HKs... all of it. They probably built this railgun, too." They probably kept it a secret from the rest of the world; didn't want anyone but Skynet getting their hands on such powerful weapons.

"Can it take out the mountain?" Burke asked Perry. He'd never seen a railgun before. Heard of them, yeah, but he knew little about them.

"It fired an hour ago; that must've been the tremor we felt. If one shot an hour does that kind of damage," he pointed up at the twin craters on the mountainside. "We've got maybe... three days."

"And then what?"

Derek clenched his fist open and closed, angry at himself that there was literally nothing they could do. He could lead a team and take out a few machine patrols, but a railgun attacking the mountain: he felt completely powerless. Skynet would tear through Cheyenne Mountain and the machines would march inside like ants to a picnic and slaughter every last one of them. Check mate.

* * *

A pair of dusty Hummers rolled to a stop on the side of the road and nine heavily armed men stepped out. They spread out and marched through the ruined settlement, weapons shouldered and at the ready as they searched for any sign of survivors or anything that could lead them to their prey. Chris McGinty scanned the settlement with a keen eye; it was pathetically tiny, not even a village: just a bunch of hicks and morons with RVs and trailers hiding out in the desert, hoping Skynet would ignore them. Very stupid of them, he thought.  _You don't hide out in a shithole like this; you go to ground._

It was clear to all who had eyes to see what had happened here; the burnt out, shattered wrecks of trailers, the bomb-blasted gas station, and the twisted, hulking metallic mass of a T-2 drone told a tale that McGinty found predictable yet so satisfying at the same time. Hiding out in the open desert like this, they'd have been found eventually anyway. The machines weren't stupid.

Bodies strewn across the settlement – or pieces of them, in some cases – told of an ineffectual attempt to fight back against the machine. He marched past a ditch on the side of the road and saw the bottom half of a fat man laid out on his back, surrounded by a pool of dried blood that had soaked into the ground. Entrails poked out of his bottom half and bits and pieces of the top were scattered about the area. "Must have taken a thirty-mil," McGinty muttered. Round from a T-2 had hit him. It was messy but at least it would've been quick: he wouldn't have known what hit him. Worse ways to go, he figured. Next to him on the ground was a shotgun. He shook his head slightly in disappointment: it took serious firepower to kill these things; trying to fight a machine with shotguns and hunting rifles was simply a waste of time. They'd lost this fight but clearly  _someone_ had taken the thing out. He had a feeling he knew who.

"Check for survivors," he called out to his men as he climbed up onto the inert shell of the behemoth and took a closer look, ignoring the 'yes sirs' he got in reply as his soldiers fanned out and searched. It had been hit by something more powerful than the pissy little shotguns and hunting rifles these people had. He counted several small impact craters, and numerous gouges and scorch marks on its chest and head. The lower half of the thing was an utter wreck; some kind of rocket or high explosive if he had to guess. No way would some dumbass hillbilly gas station owner or a bunch of fleeing travellers have anything close to that kind of firepower.

His youngest soldier, Corey, ran up to him and caught his attention. "Sir, we found survivors."

"Show me," McGinty said, and allowed Corey to lead the way to the wreckage of the gas station. En route he noticed the gas pumps looked undamaged; good, he thought. They'd need to top up their vehicles before they carried on their search. They had plenty in the tanks but they never knew when they'd get the chance to refuel again. He knew better than to risk them being stranded.

Corey led him inside the station through a gaping hole in the wall, and the pair passed warily under a sagging section of ceiling and through to a back room dominated by a sofa, with tinned food and children's toys scattered on the floor. A woman and two children huddled in the corner, next to a man in his mid-thirties, with several days' worth of stubble on his unwashed face. All of them were dirty, unkempt, and afraid. He had a feeling they'd hidden out here for several weeks before the T-2 showed up, which seemed pretty recent, judging from the bodies.

"I need information," McGinty said bluntly as he approached the frightened civilians. Niceties and pussy-footing around were never his forte; they didn't have time to waste on pleasantries. "What happened here?"

"What do you think happened?" The woman replied.

"Who stopped it?" He asked. "Don't say you did," he turned to the man. "I'll know you're lying."

"They led it here, and then they killed it," he said.

"And who're 'they?'" McGinty asked. "We're looking for a pair of girls: one blonde and one brunette, eighteen to twenty-five, armed to the teeth. Were they here?"

Both the man and the woman nodded together. "They killed it. I don't know how, but they did. Knew what they were doing, too."

"This is important," McGinty said. They'd just confirmed what he'd already suspected: the androids had been here. They were on the right path and sooner or later they'd catch up to them. "Where did they go? Where are they now?"

"We don't know. They just killed it, got gas, and left; didn't really talk much."

 _"Think,_  man. We have to find them, they're dangerous." McGinty grabbed the man by his jacket and shook him violently as he snarled into his face. "More dangerous than those tin cans out there," he gestured out in the direction of the destroyed T-2. "If you know anything and you don't tell me, means you're siding with Skynet."

"Sir, they don't know anything," Corey placed his hand on his commander's shoulder and eased him back, then quietly spoke to him. "Some of the guys think you're getting a little obsessed, sir."

McGinty pushed Corey back, incredulous at his youngest soldier.  _Obsessed?_ They'd not seen how strong these machines were, these androids. They were a bigger threat than any other machine out there, and he wanted them gone. Yes, a large part of it was simply revenge, and he knew that. He didn't care; it was also the right thing to do. The last time he'd been called 'obsessed' was when he'd been court-martialled for torturing terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay. He'd beaten and water-boarded a man suspected of being a leading Al Qaeda operative in Europe, suspected of the London and Madrid bombings. He'd been sentenced to military prison and the suspect had been released without charge. A year later, eight months before the world ended, McGinty had been proven right: suicide bombers had blown up a high speed train in Paris, killing a hundred and eighty. The man he'd tortured was later confirmed to have orchestrated the attack.

He wasn't obsessed, he was  _right_. These androids were the most dangerous machines on the face of the planet; they had to be taken out.

"Maybe you can tell that to Bates," McGinty growled in a low voice, then turned back to the family cowering before him, and decided maybe Corey had a point about easing up. He'd never been good at dealing with civvies. "Did they mention where they were headed? It's very important; those two 'girls' aren't girls. They're machines and they're dangerous. We need to stop them before more people die." McGinty looked around the room and then back at them. "You've got nothing left here; you help us, and we'll help you."

"Century," the woman replied. "They said something about Century City; they're looking for someone."

 _John Connor,_  McGinty remembered. The machine called Cameron had been obsessed with finding him. Why? Was it going to kill him, or rescue him? Maybe the real John Connor was working with Skynet, too. Maybe  _he_ was a machine. He'd find out when they got there.

McGinty smiled as he took in the new information, once again finding himself on the right track. "Everyone back in the cars," he said into his radio. "We're leaving."

"Hey, what about us?" the man stepped forward, his face a mask of desperation.

McGinty looked them over and sneered. Yeah, right. He fished into his pockets and pulled out a candy bar, and tossed it to one of the kids. "I said 'help', not take passengers. He nodded to the kid with the bar as he backed out of the hole in the wall. "Enjoy."

"Wait-"

 _"Don't_  follow us," he growled, pointing his assault rifle at them. He wasn't here to help civvies. Besides, he was helping plenty by taking out the two androids: that was the biggest help he could give to them, whether they realised it or not. The world would be safer without those things running around. Once they were gone he could create his own resistance again and show the world how to  _really_ fight the machines.

He looked at their desperate, pleading, pathetic faces, and for a moment he saw a flash of the woman he'd shot back in the mine – he forgot what her name was. He shouldn't have shot her, he knew; he'd been pissed off: the bitch had pointed a gun at him and beaten the crap out of him and his men. It wasn't an excuse but then he wasn't trying to explain himself to anyone. A few of his men had given him awkward looks about it, but they knew better than to say anything.

"Take all your food and water, get up to the highway and head north, then east for Nevada. Follow the signs for Virginia City, there's a group of survivors there." He imagined the civvies they'd left behind would have found their way out of the mine by now, and probably headed into the tiny little city.

He didn't wait for a response and stepped back outside. The men had all fallen back to the cars and were waiting inside, the engines already running. McGinty sat in the passenger seat of the first Hummer and slammed the door shut, placing his rifle and his pack into the footwell.

"Where to, sir?" The soldier in the driver's seat asked.

"Century City," he replied, a satisfied grin split his face as the two cars rolled forward, leaving the ruined settlement behind in the dust as they drove on south through the desert. McGinty felt like the lion who'd just caught a whiff of prey downwind; he'd silently stalk the androids through the ruins of the city and it was only a matter of time before he closed in for the kill.


	22. The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

The stillness of the night air prevailed over LA County; the pitch blackness and frigidly chill air combined with machine patrols ensured that nothing moved aboveground. Any signs of life on the surface were quickly snuffed out by Skynet's automated warriors, and anyone still alive out in the desolate concrete jungle knew well enough after months of hiding in the ruins to stay down at night; the machines could see in the dark, and people were afraid of it. The landscape of LA County was devoid of any signs of life.

The single exception was a tiny encampment within the city of Century. Even inside the wire perimeter, the majority of the camp was deathly still; condemned prisoners laid still and slept in defeated resignation, and the workers slumbered from sheer exhaustion. The machine guards stood vigilant at their posts or methodically patrolled throughout the camp. The only signs of human life came from three people scurrying hurriedly, purposefully through the camp.

John hacked into the ground with the scavenged combat knife, focusing intently on the task at hand as he cut a large square into the dirt and pushed the loose earth to one side. It would have been much easier with an actual shovel or at least a trowel, but the knife was the best they had, so they made do. John, Slater, and Byrne had spent days working out the best places to plant their explosives. John and Slater crouched on their knees and dug in a corner of the perimeter wire, shielded from view of the hospital's security cameras by the building that accommodated the slave-worker population of the camp.

Byrne tapped John on the shoulder and the younger man moved aside for the SAS veteran. The plan was John's idea, but Byrne was the one who knew explosives; it was up to him to complete the bombs. John handed the Irishman the curved magazine filled with black powder, and Byrne placed it into the hole, pressing the improvised bomb against one of the posts supporting the perimeter wire. The pair of them ignored the bloodied, severed heads above them that stared vacantly inwards into the camp, and the dried blood that caked the top of the concrete posts from the severed arteries in the neck; they'd failed completely to deter John from his escape plan. He hoped that when the bomb exploded it would tear the post right out of the ground and rip the wire fence apart, or at least create a hole big enough for them to fit through and escape.

When he'd secured the magazine to the bottom of the post, John handed Byrne the second component of the bomb: a gas-filled condom inside a black army-issue sock. Byrne had had the idea after he'd found several sealed condoms on one body – though John couldn't work out for the life of him why someone would keep  _condoms_  on them whilst trying to survive a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Byrne had said it made perfect sense to him; they could be used as impromptu water bladders, but he'd fill theirs with gas instead. More fuel for the fires.

Finally, John took out the third and final component for the bomb: the cellphone detonator, and handed it to his companion. Byrne switched it on and pressed it to his chest, concealing the neon glow from the screen as the phone powered up. He'd already tested the cell phones and preset them to silent mode, so there was no worry about the noise attracting the machines.

Byrne worked silently and threaded several wires from the cell-phone into the magazine. When the phones rang a charge would be sent down along the wires and into the magazines, igniting the black powder inside; the explosions fuelled further by the gas-filled bladders beside them. He'd worked on the phones beforehand and identified which wires he'd needed to connect to the magazine-bombs, so he could work quickly whilst assembling the explosives. They'd also practiced assembling the bombs several times over the last few nights, so they all knew exactly what to do, and that preparation had paid off; it had taken Byrne less than a minute to assemble the bomb.

Byrne nodded at John and the pair of them quickly started heaping handfuls of dirt back into the hole, covering up the homemade bomb, then smoothing the earth out and patting it down, leaving only the very top of the cellphone uncovered. They'd planned to set synchronised alarms on each of the phones, but had decided against it after one of the other prisoners gave them a better idea; one woman had sold phones for a living before J-Day and had taken a look at the detonators, then told them to use Bluetooth, instead. They couldn't dial the phones as there was no signal since the bombs had fallen, but Bluetooth would work, she insisted. John, Byrne, and Slater had all agreed it would be better to keep control of when the bombs went off; if anything went wrong they could delay it, albeit not by much: the phones all had reasonable charge, but more than two days of waiting would drain the batteries beyond use.

When they were done the pair of them stood up and turned away, then headed back towards the generator room; neither of them wanted to be anywhere near the bombs now they'd been planted. They'd spent all day and night planting them, forgoing the nightly portion of sloppy broth to place and assemble the bombs. The first had been during the shift in the day; Byrne had armed the first magazine-bomb underneath one of the furnaces whilst the others worked, making sure to place the improvised explosive device as close as possible to the fuel lines that ran from the incinerators and into the ground, reasoning whatever fuel was used to keep the fires burning would undoubtedly blow up on detonation. It had been, by far, the most dangerous part of their operation, and John had no idea how the machines hadn't caught Byrne as he'd worked on the bombs.

"Machines," John and Slater whipped their heads to the right at the sound of Slater's harsh whisper, and turned up and away from the bomb, and walked to the left along the perimeter wire. John heard the loud  _thump, thump, thump_  of machine feet as they stomped onto the ground, along with the faint whining of servos and pistons and other working parts. His blood froze for a moment, convinced the machines had discovered what they were doing. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but Byrne just walked normally alongside him and John pulled himself back together once more.  _Remember your training,_  he told himself. Not only what he'd learned in the past, but what he'd learnt since arriving in the camp:  _the machines don't care what you do,_  he reminded himself; as long as they don't perceive a threat.

The hulking eight-foot gunmetal grey machine plodded around the corner of the accommodation block and stood stock-still in front of them, blocking their way. John's eyes darted from left to right, instinctively looking for an escape – the habit so ingrained into his being it was impossible to shrug off – whilst Byrne simply offered the machine a wry grin and stuck up two fingers to the T-70. The machine remained in place before them and stared at the two humans, it didn't move an inch, and John started to seriously wonder if they'd been spotted, or at least if they'd aroused suspicion.

"We were taking a piss," Byrne said to the machine, not knowing if it could understand him or not.

The machine's head turned from Byrne, to John, and then back again. Before the machine could make any kind of move, Slater burst out from where he'd been keeping watch and rushed out beyond the accommodation block, marching quickly but being careful to not make it seem as if he were running. The T-70 turned to look at Slater as he quick-marched to the other side of the building, towards the area they'd designated as their latrine, and abandoned its position to follow the SEAL, feet stamping down on the ground and leaving indents in the dirt as it marched away.

John and Byrne both sighed in relief and waited until the machine moved out of sight before they returned to the relative safety of the generator room. Neither said a word until they were inside, and once Byrne closed the door behind them John switched the single light on, bathing the room once again in a dull yellow glow. Inside the four walls of the generator room was their own little haven; almost a respite from their harsh existence.

Everything had been neatly placed away inside the room; the empty cases from hundreds of rounds they'd painstakingly gathered over the past several months had been placed into a cardboard box, along with various other items they'd collected. Attached to the generator was another bomb, connected to a cellphone like the others. When this bomb went, they hoped it would blow up the generator and create enough chaos, in concert with the other explosives they'd planted, to escape.

Scattered around the camp were more impromptu weapons that they'd devised; a pair of landmines constructed from four shotgun shells each, tied together and nails placed under each round, were buried into the ground with only a faint dusting of earth to conceal them. 'Toe Poppers', Byrne had called them. Even the combined blast of four shotgun shells wouldn't damage a T-70, but it'd sure as hell knock it on its ass, he'd told John; maybe buy them a few extra seconds. They'd hidden some more homemade weapons all around the camp to aid their escape.

John sat down on the floor, leaned back against the wall, and couldn't help but smile. He hadn't escaped yet but he could feel the elation already; they were so close. They'd achieved so much in what had felt like an eternity but was really only a matter of months.

Byrne fished through the remaining ration packs they'd scavenged until he found one he liked, and tossed another to John. John picked it up and read the stencilling on the foil pack:  _Chicken Fajitas,_  his favourite so far, but after months of eating shitty broth, he'd have eaten practically anything else. He tore open the pack and used a spoon from the accommodation block to shovel it into his mouth. Gastronomic delight kissed his taste buds and John chewed slowly, savouring the flavour of the spicy food, knowing it could be his last for a while.

"Can't believe we've done it," John said between spoonfuls of food.

"Careful, lad," Byrne warned. "We're not there yet." He knew from experience one of the most dangerous parts of any mission was near the end; when you were on the way out, waiting for the helicopter home, so close you could practically smell the beer and the real food waiting back in the world. The times when it was so close was the time he knew people let their guard down, and it had cost some people he'd known dearly.

John nodded in reply. He knew that was true, but he was so close now he dared to hope.

"We've not talked about where we're gonna go once we're out," Byrne said. They'd spent so long planning the escape, and knew where they were going in the short term, but their long term plans had yet to be discussed.

"Las Vegas," John replied simply. "I need to find someone."

"The chick in the photo, cute brunette?"

"Yeah," John replied wistfully. He needed to find Cameron, to see if he could salvage her; if her chip was intact then he'd do whatever it took to bring her back, even if it took him years. If she was gone, if her chip was smashed then he still needed to see for himself, to put her to rest, and make sure Skynet never got a hold of her body. Either way, he had to find her again. He'd tried to push Cameron to the back of his mind lately, to focus on escaping. But she was always there, and always would be.

"Think she could still be alive?" Asked Byrne.

John looked down to the floor, pretty sure of the answer but not wanting to admit it until he saw for himself. "I don't know. I need to find out," he said.

"Well, I'll help ye out if ye want," Byrne said. John had gotten them to this point; it had all been his idea, and they'd not be standing around talking about what they were going to do when they got out, if not for him; least he could do was lend the kid a hand.

"Thanks," John smiled at the Irishman. It was definitely nice to have help, he had to admit. "What about you?" He asked. "You leave anyone behind?"

"Only an ex-wife and divorce papers I never bothered to sign," he replied. "Not really sorry to lose either."

"What happened?"

"She couldn't handle me being in the Regiment and leaving to go around the world all the time; though she knew what I did when we got married, so she knew the score. I got called away just before one Christmas – six day deniable op – got back on Christmas Eve to find the house empty. Just left without warning, and got a letter six months later to say she wanted a divorce. Tossed the papers in the bin and signed up for a two-year exchange with the SEALs. We never had any kids, so I didn't leave anyone behind."

The faint  _whirring_  of rotor blades in the air drew John's attention away from Byrne. They'd heard plenty of aircraft coming into the camp before; the rotor blades from the V-22 Ospreys that flew prisoners into the camp several times every day. Still, it was rare that they came in at night.

"You hear that?" John asked as he moved to the door and slowly pushed it open to peer outside.

"Just more poor bastards coming in," Byrne replied.

"No, it's not," Slater appeared in front of the half-open doorway. "Take a look."

John and Byrne stepped outside and peered up into the air. John could make out two sets of landing lights approaching the camp: two Ospreys, he thought; nothing new about that. It took him a moment to see it, but he realised what Slater meant: hovering low over the camp, flying without lights, he barely made out the sleek, lethal silhouette of an HK, and the faint whine of the jet engines that propelled it in the air. He couldn't make it out too well, but he was certain the thing was fully armed. He'd never noticed it before: had it always been there in the camp, out of sight, or had it arrived with these new Ospreys?

One of the Ospreys descended slowly down into the camp grounds: more prisoners to be disposed of. But the second flew on over the camp itself and slowly spun around over the top of the hospital building, before it lowered down onto the roof – too high for John to see anymore. The HK followed after the second aircraft and copied its movements, landing down on the top of the hospital, and out of John's sight. John figured there must be a helipad there, but why the hell was an Osprey and an HK landing on there? He'd never seen anything approach the hospital roof before: all prisoners were dumped into the grounds and sorted into one of the two halves of the camp by the machines.  _What the hell's going on?_

* * *

George stared out of his porthole into the inky blackness of the night sky, imagining the world whip by underneath him as the aircraft soared over the ruins below. It was a real shame that Connor hadn't been inside the mountain, but it didn't really matter, he supposed. With all the meticulous preparations they'd made over the past decade coming into fruition, nothing Connor did could make the slightest bit of difference. Still, he felt the urge to nip the human resistance in the bud before it got out of hand.

George tapped absently on the glass of the porthole, bored, uncomfortable without his feet on the ground – a product of living in a future without air travel – and looking forward to touching solid dirt and getting on with their work. He'd waited several hours out in the open in Colorado Springs, waiting for Emily's team to pick him up. They'd had the railgun delivered to Schriever AFB and ensured it was up and running, and had enough shells to rip the mountain apart. George hadn't minded waiting; it gave his injuries a chance to start to heal, and time for him to simply rest and relax; something he very rarely had a chance to do but savoured every opportunity.

He'd not minded the waiting  _on the ground,_  but he hated flying with every fibre of his being. The countless hours he'd spent cooped up on airliners – travelling the equivalent distance to the moon and back as he'd travelled the world to set up the resources to create machines for Skynet – had made flying his second most hated thing, after John Connor.

His mood had turned sour five minutes after they'd taken off, something not gone unnoticed by the other four occupants inside the rear of the aircraft.

"You okay, sir?" Emily turned around in her seat in front of George. The striking blonde infiltrator was next in command after him, and she'd done a fantastic job in his absence. It was because of her that Cheyenne's tanks had been destroyed, and the only operational railgun in the world had been delivered to Schriever AFB for use against the mountain.

"I'm fine," George replied curtly, looking towards her and then at the other three in the cabin – Michael, Richard, and Dean, as they sat in hushed conversation, inaudible to him over the loud whirring of the Osprey's rotors. He just wanted to get back onto solid ground as soon as possible. Even as infiltrators, they weren't perfect; they could still feel, albeit Skynet had taught them how to suppress their emotions to be more like the machines; but it wasn't a hundred percent successful. They still had their own particular likes and dislikes, and things that made them nervous. For George, it was flying.

"We're nearly there," Emily flashed him a grin. She found it just a tad amusing that her commander was afraid of flying. If Skynet had known, she thought, it wouldn't have taken kindly: fear wasn't tolerated.

"Have you spoken to the others?" George asked.

"I told them we're on our way." Emily said nothing more and George knew there was nothing more she had to say. They didn't discuss their research and development projects over radios, or even satellite communications; they never knew who might be listening in.

"We've lost contact with Aaron's team in Cactus Springs. They set up the oil rig and reported they were being followed by one of the surviving locals. Not heard from them since."

"Minor setback," George grunted. If they'd not been in contact for that long then it could only mean they were dead. Could a whole team of infiltrators really have been taken out by some yahoo local? It seemed inconceivable. When he'd taken care of this next stage of their plan, he'd organise a party to find out what happened, but for the time being it wasn't important.

Eventually the Osprey slowed as they approached their landing site, and George smiled in mild relief as the landing gear kissed the ground with a gentle bump. The rear hatch opened up and George was the first out and he quickly marched across to the open door on the other side of the landing platform. He saw their HK escort in their periphery – just in case any of the few remaining human-controlled jets had been airborne while they were en route – and ignored it as it lowered itself onto the landing pad next to the Osprey.

George took a moment to peer off the edge of the tall building they were on and down into the camp below; fully immersed in darkness, and even with his superior vision he couldn't make out much. The large, bulky forms of T-70s marched through the camp and around the perimeter; the only movement he could see down below.

George, Emily, and the others marched through the door and into the luminous, sterile corridors of their new home for the foreseeable future. They travelled through hallways, corridors, and down several flights of stairs. Everything was white linoleum, stainless steel, and bright neon. Cold, impersonal, sterile: the facility was primitive in comparison but also similar in many ways to the Skynet base that they'd all called home.

George smiled as he arrived at a spacious and clearly busy medical laboratory. A handful of people moved around the large room, busying themselves with their work; checking charts, computers, medical equipment, and their specimens. Lining one wall of the large room were a dozen transparent glass tanks, each large enough to fit a man inside, and filled with dark crimson fluid that George knew had to be blood. Emily and the others looked at the tanks with curiosity, as did he. He stopped next to one and peered closer to look inside. Through the glass and the blood he saw a body inside, a large one; easily over six feet tall, and a broad, strong physique that would make football players envious. The body's eyes were closed and it was completely hairless.

As George examined it more closely he could see the skin was missing; the body was a mass of muscle tissue and prominent veins that visibly pulsed beneath. He pressed his open palm gently to the glass as he looked inside. This was one of the first; the new breed of metal angels, perfect soldiers to win the war for Skynet once and for all.  _This_ was why Connor being alive didn't matter. George ran his hands over the digits stencilled on the front of the transparent tank, and silently mouthed the legend it bore:  _Series TOK-888, Batch 2, Model no 008._

The sound of footsteps behind him tore his attention from the terminator-in-the-making before him and he looked back to see a familiar, though hardly welcome, face. A red-haired, thin man, wearing a white lab coat and grey combat trousers, black t-shirt, and black boots underneath, faced him and offered a smile.  _Daniel..._ he forgot his last name, or more accurately, he didn't care. He was human, an old friend of Charles Fischer, and a Grey: not a believer like the infiltrators, a coward who'd made a deal with Skynet to save his own life. Even though they were on the same side, George had far more respect for the humans who fought and died to save their own kind. At least they understood self-sacrifice, unlike Daniel and the other turncoats. They were actually deluded enough to believe Skynet would spare their lives when the war was finished. They had their uses, though.

"Daniel," George grunted, nodding his head once as nothing more than a formality. Skynet had instructed him to take the Grey with them back in time, and despite his misgivings, he'd grudgingly obliged: he would never go against or even protest his master's orders.

"George, Emily," Daniel said, nodding back at the infiltrators. "Welcome to Century."

* * *

"Where the hell did ye go?" Byrne asked Slater as the SEAL appeared in the doorway, stepped inside and sat down, tearing open a foil ration pack and shovelling the contents down without bothering to see what was inside. "Ye took yer time."

"Do you know how hard it is to take a crap, when you don't even need one, with one of those tin cans watching you like a hawk?" Slater said between mouthfuls of beef stew.

"Why didn't you just take a piss?" John asked. The plan had been that Slater would act as a distraction, should any machines approach as they were planting the bombs. Slater had walked out towards the latrine pit, as the machines would follow him to see what he was doing. He'd expected that the machine would see him at the latrine and then leave, but it had watched him for several long, awkward moments, before it had moved on, satisfied that he was only relieving himself.

"That's even harder when you don't need one," Slater retorted.

John watched from the doorway as the second Osprey landed inside the workers' half of the camp, and a trio of T-70s marched towards the aircraft, the two-handed machine among them as usual. The rotor blades on the ends of the wings still spun,  _whirring_  loudly through the air and combining with the high pitched roar of the engines to rouse all the residents – workers and condemned – from their fitful, uneasy slumbers. Some of the workers peered through the doorway, as several of the condemned prisoners pressed their grimy, unwashed faces against the wire dividing the two halves of the camp, using the event to distract themselves from the horror they'd soon face in the coming days. But many on both sides of the camp simply turned over and tried to sleep; accustomed to the regular arrival of the aircraft and not bothering to give it a moment's extra thought.

The rear hatch of the Osprey opened up and two dozen manacled prisoners shuffled out into the open space of the camp, under the watchful glare of the three machines. They quickly got to work branding the humans with their barcode tattoos. John couldn't see too well in the darkness, but he could tell none of the prisoners were singled out. That was very bad for them, he knew. The majority of all people who arrived in the camp were silently sentenced to death by the machines; the strongest being selected to work. But John hadn't noticed a single new face in the workers' half of the camp in a while: the machines apparently had enough slaves and even the young, fit, and healthy prisoners were deemed surplus to requirement and condemned to the gas chambers.

John spotted movement from the back of the accommodation block. Not machines, he thought, as he saw someone scurry in amongst the shadows. He shook his head; there was no point in hiding in shadows; the machines had advanced night vision capabilities and used infrared to target their victims. Against humans it might work, but it was totally useless against the machines.

"I'm going out there," John said to Byrne and Slater. He wanted to see who was out there, sneaking around. He'd told all the other prisoners that the three of them would plant the bombs, and having a load of people out at night would only arouse suspicion.

"Why?" Slater asked. "Just leave it; we've only got four and a half hours until we have to get up and work again."

"I want to know what they're up to," John said, and slipped out of the shed without another word. He closed the door as quietly as he could, the only sound a faint  _click_  as it shut behind him. He made his way across the open ground, feeling nervous as he passed the Osprey and the machines off to his right. He was careful not to walk too close to them as he approached the accommodation block.  _Just walk normally_  he told himself. Running or trying to sneak around would arouse suspicion, and the machines wouldn't hesitate to gun him down if they perceived him as any kind of threat. One of the new prisoners would simply take his place and receive a stay of execution.

John quickly made his way past the accommodation block, the machines not appearing to pay him any mind, and he marched round the back of the building, towards where he'd seen the movement. Half a dozen men and two women stood against the wall of the accommodation block, between the building and the fence that bisected the camp. None of the prisoners on the other side seemed to pay any attention to them whatsoever.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" John recognised Simon's voice whispering harshly to him, the man was barely visible in the darkness until he stepped closer to John. He saw Guy behind him, staring daggers at John, as were the others.

"Piss off, kid," one of the others hissed. "We're getting out of here."

In the murky darkness John could just about make out Simon and Guy fishing something out of their pockets. "How?" John asked. He didn't know they'd had their own plan; they'd made a point of not joining in on his scheme, but he'd just assumed they were being awkward for the sake of it. He hadn't expected them to have anything up their sleeves, but he was intrigued.

"We're taking the Osprey," Simon said. "Jill's a pilot," he pointed to one of the women in the group, a tall, olive-skinned brunette in her thirties, who'd allied herself with Simon and Guy and remained isolated from those who'd volunteered themselves to take part in John's plan.

"You can't just 'take it'," John hissed.

"Watch us," Guy spat. He and Simon held out two small, spherical objects each, and John instantly recognised them up close, even in the darkness: grenades. They'd been doing some scavenging, too, John thought.

"Don't!" John hissed desperately. "They've got an HK; you won't make it."

Guy shoved John hard in the chest, forcing him to topple backwards and land on his ass on the ground. "Bullshit," he snarled. "I didn't see any HK. Now we're getting out of here; you can come with us or get out of our way; either way you  _shut the fuck up."_

John remained sat on the ground; there was no way he could convince them to stop and no way he could physically keep them from carrying out their crazy plan. Simon and Guy crept round the side of the building and tossed their grenades towards the machines branding the line of prisoners. The small spheres bounced on the ground with a dull thud and landed at the machines' feet.

The grenades exploded with a loud  _boom_  and threw the machines backwards to the ground, clattering in a heap on the floor. The shrapnel also tore through the new prisoners unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast; their bodies shredded by the fragmentation grenades, and several more were wounded, sprawled on the dirt, bloodied and in various states of consciousness.

"Go!" Simon screamed. The group left John sat on his ass and ran towards the Osprey. Guy tossed another grenade at the machines for good measure, and the explosion kept the machines down whilst they made a beeline for the aircraft. Simon was the first up the lowered ramp and inside, illuminated by dull yellow glow of the cabin lights on the ceiling. He waved the others in, urging them to move faster, wishing he had a gun to cover their approach as the machines started to get back up to their feet. They all made it inside the aircraft as the first of the machines rose back to its feet and aimed its minigun at them.

Simon slammed the  _close_  button for the rear hatch and screwed his eyes shut, waiting for the burst of fire to pound against the Osprey's hull, but it never came and he opened his eyes again to see all three of the machines upright and pointing their weapons at them, but inexplicably holding their fire.

Jill ran to the cockpit and pressed a switch that overrode the computer and reset the aircraft back to manual control, then pulled back on the yoke, raising the Osprey into the air.

"Get us out of here!" Guy yelled anxiously. He didn't want to wait and see if the tin cans changed their mind and decided to hose them down.

The aircraft rose up into the sky as the hatch sealed shut. Their ascent seemed to take an age and Guy, Simon, and the rest waited anxiously for the burst of fire that would send them crashing down. Jill rotated the engines so the rotors faced forwards and they picked up speed, soaring over the perimeter fence and out of the camp, towards the ruins of Century City. The prisoners inside cheered as they sat down on the hard benches and congratulated each other, relief washing over them as the transport flew over the perimeter fence and took them outside the camp, gaining altitude and accelerating. Guy felt a sense of sweet irony that the aircraft that had brought them to the hellhole of Century work camp was the same one that granted their freedom.

"Where to?" Jill asked.

"Head south and get us clear of the city," Guy said. John might have been lying about the camp having an HK, he thought, but LA Country was swarming with machines; they needed to get as far away as possible before they were spotted by any drones in the air. Jill opened the throttle and they accelerated away, the ground behind them whipping by through the portholes as they left Century work camp in the dust. Everyone inside shared the same thought:  _we're free!_

The mood was broken suddenly as a klaxon shrieked throughout the aircraft, and the Osprey banked hard to the left, throwing several passengers who'd not bothered to buckle up across the cabin as the small aircraft violently lurched.

"What's going on?" Simon asked, struggling to stay upright and leaning on the back of Jill's chair for support.

"HK on our ass!" she shouted out.

Simon stared out of the windshield, dumbstruck, his mouth slightly open as the Jill continued to turn the aircraft, and he saw the blinking lights of an aircraft closing in on them, fast. "Kid was right," he mumbled. The radar screen showed the HK so close behind them it was practically up their asses. "Lose it!" he screamed.

"I'm trying!" Jill roared back as she pushed the yoke forward and they flew lower, hoping to find cover in amongst the ruined skyscrapers and towers. It was no good, she knew; they simply weren't fast enough.

Simon stared at the radar console as the green blip behind them moved even closer to the centre of the screen, and then a second warning alarm blared almost deafeningly.

"Lock on! Lock on!" Jill shouted. "Missile incoming!"

* * *

A crowd of prisoners had gathered outside the accommodation block and stood out in the cold night air, whooping and cheering on the Osprey as it flew away from the camp and over the ruins of the city. John stood among them, one of the few not cheering at the escapists. Instead he watched with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw as the HK took off from the hospital roof and tore through the air towards the fleeing transport.

The aircraft banked hard to the left as the HK flew closer and closer, whoever was flying it simply tried to shake the Hunter-Killer off their tail, despite the fact their pursuer was much faster, much more agile. John watched as the tail lights of the Osprey descended, going for the deck in the hopes of using the ruins to block a straight shot from a missile.

The HK soared through the air towards its target like a lethal bird of prey. All John saw were the taillights of the drone as it neared the Osprey, then a brief flash that shot forwards: a missile locked on and closing in on its target; moments later fire erupted in the sky and sparks shot outwards like a firework, followed by a faint  _pop_  a split second later. The Osprey was gone.

On the ground, the T-70s had picked themselves up off the ground and stood upright. The grenades had done very little damage to the machines; their armour barely scuffed. Several of the prisoners they'd been busy branding when Simon and Guy had made their escape had been killed outright or critically wounded in the blasts. The machines turned their guns on them all and opened fire, the massive trio of sustained bursts at point blank rage literally tore the humans to pieces, shredding them into unrecognisable lumps and strips of flesh and shattered bone.

The crowd muttered in disappointment and went back inside. John shook his head at such a complete waste; Simon and Guy should have worked  _with_ him, rather than remain separate. They were clearly resourceful guys, and their chances of getting out would have been so much better had they listened to him. Instead they'd killed themselves and a dozen other prisoners. He took one last look outwards at where the Osprey had been shot down, and followed the others inside the accommodation block.

The other prisoners all made room for him, and cleared one of the free mattresses and blankets; ironically it was one of those which Simon and Guy had dominated. The loss of the failed escapists had now left four mattresses and four blankets unoccupied. John took a blanket but let Byrne and Slater occupy the mattress, and the others shared out the remaining bedding between them. He laid out on the hard floor, curled up and wrapped the blanket around himself.

"How the hell are we gonna get out of here, now?" another prisoner asked. John couldn't make out who it was in the darkness. "Even if we make it out the camp, that goddamn HK's gonna hunt us down."

"I'll think of something," John said. In truth, there wasn't much more they could do. The HK was there; it'd fly after them and hunt them down when they escaped. That was inevitable. Not all of them would make it; maybe  _none_  of them, but he'd rather go out trying, like Guy and Simon, than working himself to death. The HK was a serious blow to their plans, however. John expected there'd be machines outside, keeping watch for escapists or even anyone on the outside who'd planned to mount a rescue. But he'd never expected a small prisoner camp to have its own attack aircraft. And he was assuming the HK that shot down Simon and Guy was the only one they had. For all they knew there could be more, or they could call in more machines from elsewhere. The machines would be on high alert, now, even more watchful for anyone to try something else. They had to tread very carefully, but they couldn't abort it now: the bombs were set and they'd never get another chance.

"Tomorrow night," John said aloud so everyone could hear him. "We're going for it tomorrow." He wished he felt as confident as he sounded; serious doubts had started to creep into his mind now, whether or not they were ready, whether it would work. For the umpteenth time he wished Cameron was with him; things didn't seem so bad when they were together. With her, even the worst news imaginable was slightly more bearable.

* * *

This is great, _John smiled to himself and put his feet up on the table. He leaned back in the sofa and grabbed the remote, switching on the TV and flicking through channels. It was the first day in weeks that John had been able to just kick back and relax, without worrying about Skynet, cyborgs sent to assassinate him, or running himself into the ground with Cameron's punishing training regimen._

_Derek had taken John out training a number of times, too; teaching him how to survive in the wild like he did in the future: it hadn't simply been survival, but learning how to live on only the most basic sustenance, eating tree bark, stinging nettles, and bugs, whilst being hunted by both Cameron and Derek, who'd stalked him around the woods in the middle of nowhere: an escape and evasion exercise in which he'd had to cross miles and miles of forest whilst evading his uncle and cyborg guardian. He'd lasted a little under two days before Cameron had caught up with him, gunning him down mercilessly with a burst of paintballs in his ass._

_John had sworn she'd smirked when he conceded defeat, and he'd detected a faint smugness from her on the car ride home, during which Derek had lectured him the entire trip back. He'd spotted the faint upturn of her lips, the slight spark in her eyes that he'd spent so long trying to convince himself wasn't really there, and simply how she'd carried herself. Still, she'd told him he'd earned some time off, so the next few days were left for him to relax. Derek had gone off to buy groceries, leaving John and Cameron alone in the house._

_John flicked through channel after channel, seeing nothing on that took his fancy. Daytime TV sucked. He'd never really been one for TV, but now he just wanted to spend the day chilling out, being_ normal.

_Cameron walked into the lounge, her bare feet barely made a sound as she approached John and sat down on the sofa next to him, so close their shoulders pressed together slightly. John didn't mind; he'd become accustomed to Cameron being close to him lately. Since they'd buried his mom and he'd realised once and for all there was more to Cameron than wires and programming, they'd become closer than he'd ever been to anyone. Not that that was really saying a lot, given his track record with friends, but he was definitely more comfortable with her around than not._

_"Hey," he said as she sat down and leaned back. "Where've you been?"_

_"Patrolling," Cameron said simply._

_"Cameron, if it's my day off then it's yours too. Okay?"_

_"Machines don't have days off," Cameron replied._

_"You need a better union," John quipped, flicking impatiently through channel after channel of pure crap._

_"Skynet didn't have a dental plan," Cameron said blankly, looking at John._

_"Good one," he grinned, a little surprised she actually made a joke. He'd thought humour would be something beyond her: seeing as some_ people _– namely Derek – didn't have a sense of humour, he hadn't held out much hope of Cameron ever developing one. She didn't understand most jokes she heard, and she had little if any concept of what was funny and what wasn't. She'd probably heard the joke somewhere else and adapted it, but at least she'd tried._

_Cameron snatched the remote from John's grasp with a swiftness only a terminator was capable of, plucking it from him so fast he'd barely even seen her hand before the controller was gone._

_"Hey!" he groaned as she changed the channel, switching over to CNN. "It's our day off," he protested. "Nothing to do with Skynet, remember?"_

_Cameron ignored him and placed the remote on the sofa arm on her side, out of John's reach. She turned her attention to the TV screen as the commercials ended._

_Any thought of liberating the remote from Cameron abandoned John's mind as he saw the headlines on the news._ 'Air Force Goes Public With Computer Defence System.'  _John sat forward, his eyes widening as the words on screen hit home. His heart rate shot up rapidly, and Cameron could instantly tell he was distressed._

_"We'll now take you to the Pentagon," the newsreader said on screen. "Where Air Force Major-General Dwight Jones is making a statement."_

_John watched as the screen changed to an image of a podium outside the Pentagon, where a tall black officer in Air Force blue dress uniform stood before a small crowd of reporters._

_"We're pleased to announce that six months ago Congress approved the funding bill for our latest AI application: the Skynet Defence System. The Air Force signed a multibillion dollar contract with the Kaliba Conglomeration, who have already created a functioning AI, and we are in the process of creating infrastructure to allow it to control not only our nuclear arsenal, but to effectively compliment our current unmanned assets, as well as our next generation autonomous weapons._

_"This AI will take command of our most powerful weapons and enable the communication and coordination of all our armed forces more effectively than ever before. Put simply: the Skynet Defence System will make our nation stronger, and will make the world a much safer place to live."_

_John closed his eyes and shook his head, fighting the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks. It had all been for nothing; they'd fought and fought, and all this time they'd already lost. Skynet existed, it was online, and it was in the hands of the military. Everything they'd done, everything they'd suffered through, was for nothing. John ignored the discussion in the newsroom onscreen over how the Skynet project was expected to create tens of thousands of new jobs in manufacturing alone, and how it was being seen as a welcome reprieve to many families hit hard by the recession._

_"Turn it off," John said bitterly, wiping his eyes. Cameron saw the distress building up in John and didn't hesitate; she switched the TV off, but intended to watch again later when John wasn't around, to glean all the information she could._

_"It's over," John said, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. "We lost."_

_"We haven't lost," Cameron said. She'd suspected for a long time that they wouldn't be able to prevent Skynet, which was part of why she'd pushed John so hard in his training._

_"We have!" John snapped at her, turning to face her as the tears started to stream from the corners of his eyes and down his face. "Mom died for me, and we still lost. She died for nothing."_

_Cameron watched him carefully for a long moment, noting his body language and his facial expressions. She knew he was upset, but she didn't know how to help. She did know that John was wrong. "Not for nothing," she said, placing her hand on the back of his neck. "For you."_

_"Yeah, everyone dies for me," John rolled his eyes. And for what? He thought. He wasn't a saviour, whatever they said. He'd fight Skynet to his dying breath but he knew he'd lose; what the hell could he do? Why did they look up to him? "We failed, Cameron. What's left, now?"_

_"You fight," Cameron replied. It was what he was destined to do; whether he prevented Skynet entirely or beat it the same way his future self had, it was what he was born to do. "Sarah died to keep you safe. I'd do the same. So would Derek."_

_"Why?" John asked. Stupid question, he told himself. Cameron protected him because it was her mission, and Derek protected him because he was family, and because Future-John beat Skynet, and they all expected him to do the same._ What makes me so special? _He asked himself for the millionth time in his life._

_"Because you're worth it," Cameron said, stunning John into silence. Her mission to protect John had officially ended on his sixteenth birthday, when he'd brought her back after going bad. She'd made it her mission to protect John, because she felt attached to him and because it was all she knew; she'd continued with the mission she'd previously been programmed for. She'd seen elements of his future self in him, the strength and intelligence he'd need to fight Skynet. And he'd maintained his promise to be her friend. That was why she would do anything to protect him._

_John couldn't help but blush a little. He didn't feel worthy of everyone giving up their lives for him. Maybe he wasn't supposed to, he thought. "What do we do now?"_

_Cameron pushed him back so he was leaning against the back of the sofa again, then turned around to face him, her legs crossed Indian style and looking directly at him, locking her eyes with his. "We survive Judgement Day," she said. She would have to research fallout shelters and they would have to move, to be nearby for easy travel for when Skynet attacked. "You fight Skynet. You win. I'll fight with you."_

_The thought of the world ending, of him having the weight of what would be left of it on his shoulders, was almost unbearable. But having Cameron – his only real friend – with him, fighting alongside him, having her to confide in; someone he didn't mind seeing him upset or crying, someone he could be himself around, and would always be there for him, made it just that little bit easier to bear._

_"Promise?" he asked her._

_"I promise," she replied, echoing those words she'd promised to John back in the junkyard, when he'd trusted her with a loaded gun, despite not knowing if she was still bad or not._

_"I'll hold you to that," he squeezed her hand and smiled._


	23. Often Go Awry

Two figures strolled through the shattered, devastated landscape of the city. The sun was starting to set behind the thick cloud of fallout high in the atmosphere; what little light penetrated through the trillions of particulates was quickly fading, grey darkening slowly into black. The two figures; one brunette, one blonde, held weapons to the ready and kept careful eyes peeled for any signs of movement, marching in amongst the skeletal ruins of the once tall, proud structures. Cameron walked point and Courtney remained behind her. She sometimes wondered why Cameron always insisted on being in front; Courtney figured it was because Cameron was the soldier and she wasn't; the only training she'd had was from Cameron, and other than accidentally shooting a T-70 she'd only been in the one fire fight, in which she didn't think she'd made much account of herself.

Courtney took in the destruction apparent in the city; it was a twisted jungle of torn jagged metal, rubble, and strewn litter. Glass fragments lined the ground like a carpet, each threatening to cut any poor soul unfortunate enough to fall on them to ribbons. They'd left the Topkick in a hidden spot – the garage of an abandoned house on the outskirts of the city – and walked the rest of the way. Cameron had told her driving through the city would quickly attract the machines, and they'd be safer on foot. Courtney didn't feel the least bit safe walking in the middle of what Cameron had described to her as the highest concentration of machines in the United States, and possibly even the world.

"Are we safe?" Courtney asked.

"No," Cameron answered honestly. She saw no point lying to Courtney, and the girl needed to remain alert if they were to successfully find John and rescue him.

"Are we  _okay,_ then?" Courtney replied, seeing she needed to be more specific. She knew they weren't safe, but there was taking risks, and then there was recklessly getting themselves killed. Even without the machines patrolling, there were so many other hazards present in the city that she'd picked up on. "What about, you know... fallout, radiation?"

"We're safe," Cameron nodded her head as she picked her way through the remnants of a tall building. Courtney breathed a small sigh of relief, both at Cameron's words and at being inside once more; out in the open seemed infinitely more dangerous. "Most of the fallout's settled. We're safe if we don't stay here long."

"What's  _'long?'_ Courtney asked.

"Weeks, months," Cameron replied. "Don't eat or drink anything from here."

"Wait," Courtney said, a burning question suddenly entering her brain. "If John's been here all this time, he must have been eating and drinking... won't he be contaminated?"

Cameron had spent so much time concerning herself with how she would find him, and actually searching for him, that the issue of fallout hadn't occurred to her. "I hadn't thought of that," she admitted. There was nothing to be done about it now; finding and rescuing John was her main priority. Future-John had survived six years in the work camp, so  _her_  John should be even less affected by any fallout than his future self, but that meant little to Cameron. The fallout could cause cancer; even if it were forty years from now, and the war long won, it would still be untreatable in the post-Judgement Day conditions.

Courtney's words made Cameron want to abandon stealth and sprint through the city – even though she knew after months spent around the fallout, minutes or hours were irrelevant. She wanted him back. Now.

"I'm sure he's fine," Courtney said quickly, taking Cameron's silence as a bad thing, and wanting to reassure her.

The pair marched in silence as Cameron continued to lead the way. She'd never been to Century Work Camp in the future but she had detailed files on Skynet's installations in the area, and knew exactly where it was as if she'd been there a thousand times. They passed shattered building after ruined building, block after block, crossing through the ruins of the former commercial district of the city, marching through the vast maze of destruction.

Courtney recognised one building from TV – one of the most notable skyscrapers in the LA Skyline: FOX Plaza. "Score one for machines," she muttered, smirking slightly as she took in the obliterated tower. The masses of shined glass that had once reflected sunlight were gone, revealing a blackened, twisted skeletal frame within. The top of the building had been sheared off completely and lay in thousands of pieces of jagged metal and concrete at the base of the tower.

Cameron turned around to look at her, confused at Courtney's statement. "I don't understand," she said. Why was Courtney pleased at the destruction of the FOX building?

"They cancelled all my favourite shows," Courtney answered. "Guess Skynet did  _one_ thing right." Cameron said nothing and simply nodded in understanding. John had complained similarly when FOX had cancelled  _The Simpsons_ shortly before Judgement Day _._

Cameron heard a noise behind them as they marched; a faint sound of crunching, like something heavy running over gravel, or debris, followed by a low rumbling. Without conscious effort she compared it to her files and instantly recognised the sound:  _a T-2._

"Inside," Cameron pointed to the FOX building and ran over the littered debris on the ground, quickly making her way inside the ruins of the tower, Courtney a scant few feet behind her – her skill at hiding uncanny. The pair of them ducked into the building's lobby and hid behind the bullet riddled reception desk. They both immediately realised people must have hidden inside sometime after Judgement Day and been discovered. The walls were pockmarked with scores of bullet holes and had large chunks of plaster gouged out of them. Dark crimson patches of dried blood stained floor and walls in multiple places. All that remained of the bodies were blood, some bone fragments, and shreds of clothing.

The pair of them remained low and still behind the reception desk as the rumbling got louder, and Cameron estimated it was directly in front of the entrance to the FOX Plaza; in line of sight to them, with only the mahogany desk between themselves and the T-2 outside. The rumbling stopped right in front of them, but Cameron knew it wasn't gone. It had stopped right outside. If the machine had spotted them there was little she could do against it; she had three full magazines for her SCAR-H but only a single grenade left for the weapon's launcher. Courtney was similarly armed. If they engaged the T-2 with their current armaments their chances were negligible.

Several long moments of tense silence reigned, in which Cameron assessed her options if the machine discovered them; they amounted to very little; there was nowhere to run for cover if the T-2 fired on them, little chance of fighting back, and even if they did, the fight would attract more machines' attention and their situation would deteriorate.

After several long seconds the rumbling started again and Cameron peeked over the top of the desk to see the rear of the T2 as it rolled out of sight. She ducked back down and nodded at Courtney, who breathed out a low sigh of relief as she too realised the machine was leaving.

They knelt behind the reception desk and waited in terse silence for several minutes, making sure the machine was out of range and there were no follow-up patrols behind it, before they finally moved out, marching away from their hiding spot and back outside, keeping close to the ruined structures to use as cover, should they encounter another machine patrol. They dashed from block to block, crossing the litter and debris strewn roads, ignoring the blasted remains of humans caught out by the machines: ranging from bleached skulls, picked clean by scavengers, to bodies that had fallen more recently.

Cameron noticed all her processes had increased and sped up in anticipation as they neared their destination. She had already planned their next moves: she'd visually confirm the camp then find a hidden position where she and Courtney would observe, confirm John was there, assess the camp's defences, and then infiltrate and rescue him. She was looking forward to having John back. Once she had him she was never going to leave his side again.

Cameron paused just before the corner of their current block, remaining next to the remains of a store on her left, keeping out of the camp's line of sight. Courtney saw her stop and stood still behind her. "What's going on?" She asked. Was it another patrol? She'd noticed that Cameron's sight and hearing seemed to be much better than hers; either that or she had some kind of sixth sense when it came to machines.

"Century," Cameron spoke in a low, soft voice, and tilted her head sharply to the left. Courtney got the message: it was around the corner.

Cameron stayed rooted to the spot, perplexed. She couldn't hear anything: there were no sounds of machinery, or heavy, laboured breathing, moaning, or crying. No stamping of machine feet as sentry units patrolled both inside and outside the perimeter; nothing to indicate the presence of a work camp. The camp wasn't directly around the corner: the files Cameron possessed indicated it was four blocks down; eight hundred-and-forty-two metres away. From that distance she should have been able to detect background noise from the camp.

Cameron stuck her head out and peeked round the corner, scanning the area before her intently. There was no sign of Century Work Camp. Even at half a mile, she should be able to see it. She could see the ruins of the Square Valley Mall; the site of the camp, but there was nothing; the mall had been flattened by the shockwave and only a pile of steel and concrete rubble remained.

"Where is it?" Courtney asked, following Cameron's example and peeking round the corner to have a look.

"Not here," Cameron said, her voice giving no hint of the irritation she was experiencing. "John's not here." She'd been wrong. Century Work Camp wasn't here. John wasn't here. She'd hoped – something she'd never thought she'd be capable of – that John was here. She'd  _known,_ despite all the evidence she'd used to conclude being circumstantial, that he was here. But she was wrong. Her search for John would have to continue. She had twenty-four days and eighteen hours of power remaining in her fuel cell to find him. Her only other lead was the prison ship in San Diego: the aircraft carrier  _USS Nimitz._  If that was absent like Century Work Camp she'd have exhausted all her leads. She realised she faced the extremely high probability that she would never see John again.

"You mean it's another dead end?" Courtney kicked a chunk of concrete across the road in frustration, overtly showing the dismay that Cameron inwardly felt, but didn't know how to express.

Cameron whirled round to face Courtney, her eyes glaring down into her companion's green irises. "I need you to do something for me," Cameron said.

"What is it?" Courtney asked nervously. From the way Cameron was staring at her ominously, she knew it couldn't be good.

"If I die, find John." Cameron cared little about her own existence; if she shut down, or died, as John would say, it didn't matter as long as John was safe.

 _"What?"_ Courtney couldn't believe what she was hearing. What the hell did she mean, 'if she died?' What wasn't she telling her? Cameron was the toughest person she'd ever known, even tougher than her dad, she had to admit. Nothing was going to kill her; she took out a T-2 pretty much on her own back at the gas station. "Cameron... what's wrong?"

"Promise me," Cameron said. The chances of her surviving to find John were decreasing all the time. She'd continue searching for John until her power cell depleted and she ran offline, but she wanted Courtney to continue the search if that happened. Courtney wasn't a soldier but she was learning. And she was the only person Cameron trusted. She wasn't programmed for faith, but she had faith in John, and she did in Courtney, too.

Courtney nodded solemnly. "I promise." She didn't know what was going on but Cameron was her friend, and she owed her life to her several times over. She couldn't think of anyone worse for the job, but she'd give it her best shot.

Cameron's stare softened and she smiled at Courtney, grateful. If she died, she trusted Courtney to find John. She shouldered her rifle and started back the way they'd come, Courtney turned around and followed behind. They'd march back to the Topkick and drive towards San Diego, and start the search again.

Whirring rotors buzzed up in the sky and both Cameron and Courtney looked up. A drab grey Osprey flew over the tops of the skyscrapers, heading southwest. Not towards San Diego, Cameron realised. She stared upwards at the aircraft as it flew towards the darkening sky in the west, and calculated its flight path.

_Target: Automated V22 Osprey_

_Speed: 120 Miles/Hour_

_Altitude: 220.4 Metres._

_Bearing: Southwest. 225°_

"There," Cameron said, pointing at the aircraft as it headed into the distance and started to recede from view. The machine flew out of sight and out of even Cameron's range of hearing, but she'd calculated its trajectory, and as long as they followed it, and the Osprey didn't change course, she'd find where it was going.

"We're close," Cameron told Courtney.

"How do we follow it?" Courtney asked, catching on. Cameron had told her about the Ospreys, said they had to hold people because machines were too big. They were on the right track, at least.

"Head southwest," Cameron said. "We'll find it."

Cameron started marching once again, and Courtney fell in behind. She felt another surge of hope – such an unfamiliar feeling – within her. Another possible lead to John; she had to follow it.

* * *

Night had fallen on Century Work Camp; at the stroke of midnight the furnaces had shut down and the workers left their daily toils to head back to their pitiful accommodation. The aura of the camp was entirely different on this particular night. The human slave-workers did not trudge across the camp, there was no sign of hopelessness, or weariness. Rather, the workers marched towards their living space with purpose, several with a spring in their step.

Sergeant Major Declan Byrne was the first to reach the accommodation building, and waited there for the other prisoners to arrive. Within two minutes all the working population of Century Work Camp, bar two, were crowded inside the living space and awaiting their daily intake of sloppy broth; what they hoped would be their last ever portion of the disgusting, nausea-inducing mystery-meat soup.

The air was charged with energy and excitement. Hushed but animated conversations were held throughout the room, and Byrne was the only one who remained silent. He looked left and right at the group assembled in the room, and ran a hand through his thick black hair, grown long from so many months in captivity. He'd decided one of the first things he wanted to do when they were clear of the camp was find a pair of scissors and cut the bastard mop of scraggly hair down to size.

"Shut it!" Byrne instantly brought their conversations to a halt. When all eyes were on Byrne, he spoke again. "Connor and Slater are in the generator room, making last minute preparations. The bombs are all set and we're planning to blow them at oh-oh-forty-five hours; gives us just over half an hour to eat and get ready to go."

"Why not go now?" Someone asked.

"Because we're overworked, underpaid, and underfed," Byrne replied. "If ye wanna make a run for it, tired and hungry, go ahead. This could be yer last meal in a while, so get it down yer necks."

Byrne knelt down on his knees, pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket and placed it down on the ground for all to see. The prisoners crowded around and looked down at it. Sketched on the paper was a crudely drawn diagram of the layout of the camp, bisected with a thick line down the middle, indicating the dividing fence between the two halves of the prisoner camp. Straddling the line was a small square labelled  _'gas chambers'._

The hospital building dominating the bottom right-hand corner of the camp, the furnaces and gas chambers to the left of them, all labelled in John's scruffy writing. Just left of the dividing fence was the worker's accommodation block that they were currently sitting in, and to the right of that was the generator room, slightly beyond that was the designated latrine.

"We've planted bombs here, here, and all around the perimeter fence up top," Byrne pointed to the generator room, the furnace, and several points in the fence at the top of the diagram, respectively; one where the bisecting fence met the perimeter wire, and one off to the right of the first, with the generator room between the bomb and the hospital. "Secondary bombs run under the fence between the two halves of the camp, and spread out through the camp between here and the generator room." These secondary charges, much smaller than the main bombs, would provide extra distractions and burn up the gasoline bladders to create heat signatures to interfere with the T-70's infrared based targeting systems.

Byrne, John, and Slater had all agreed to use the fleeing prisoners on the other side of the camp as a distraction: they were dead anyway and at least this gave them a chance at freedom; and better to die trying, from a bullet, than be gassed to death. The idea was that the condemned prisoners would all try to make a run for it through the hole blown at the top of the camp, where the two halves met; and whilst the machines were busy trying to contain them, the workers would all escape through the other holes in the fence. The machines couldn't chase all of them, even with the HK.

Byrne ran them through the rest of the plan, how they were to split up and make a run for the ruined buildings surrounding the camp, then they'd make their way north. Byrne didn't know how many would follow them once they got out of the camp; some would try to make a break for it on their own but that couldn't be helped.

Minutes later the two-handed T-70 arrived with the barrel of broth, as predictable as clockwork, and plodded into the living area. Instead of reacting with fear, or at least nervousness, like before, people started jeering it, sticking their fingers out and hurling insults at the machine, which made no reaction to their taunts. Byrne stood there and watched everyone hurl insults and verbal abuse at the tin can, but stood there and made no move to join in. He was just glad that nobody got carried away and tried to attack the machine or throw anything at it: insults, the machine ignored, and kind of physical attack would get messy very quickly. Whilst the machine wasn't armed it could easily tear one of them in half or punch straight through them.

When the machine turned away everyone grabbed their bowls and spoons and started to dig in. Byrne took his own portion and slowly ate, nervous about their upcoming escape, as he was before any mission. He just wanted to crack on; it was the waiting that was unbearable.

"Hey!" One of the prisoners called out, pointing out the door. "What's going on?"

Byrne took his bowl over to the entrance and saw what the prisoner was pointing at: a trio of T-70s were marching through the camp, plodding quickly and methodically across the trodden, muddy ground, the sludgy soil  _squelched_  with each metal foot that stamped down and pulled back up. It was  _where_  they were headed that caught Byrne's attention: they'd broken off from their normal patrol pattern and were making a beeline straight for the generator room.  _"Shit,"_  Byrne muttered. This couldn't be good.

* * *

"Go through it once more," John said to Slater. It was better to be safe than sorry, and once they'd broken out nobody was going to come back to get anything they'd left behind. They had to take everything in one go.

Slater spread out all the items in their inventory onto the ground, and pointed to each one as he recited the list. "Seven MREs plus accessories, one combat knife, three lighters, one cell-phone – half battery charge, four Molotov cocktails, one Desert Eagle, seven round magazine loaded."

"Byrne gets the phone," John said. Byrne had preset the phones so he could blow them in sequence, and he knew better than all of them which ones to set off first. They were better off with the detonator in Byrne's hands than anyone else's. "I'll take the gun."

Three of them – one being Slater – would take a Molotov and a lighter each, John decided, and a fourth would take the final bomb and have to stick close to someone with a lighter.

John couldn't even describe how he felt, so close to their escape, less than an hour away, and they had pretty much everything planned, all squared away, but he still didn't feel ready. He felt buzzed, excited at the prospect of escape, nervous at what could go wrong... he felt a hundred different things at once, but they'd planned this for months now; there was nothing more they could do and he was worried the machines would catch on to them if they waited much longer. He wondered if he'd felt like that in the future, when he'd escaped after six years of hell in Century. Maybe it didn't matter whether he'd planned it for six years or six months; he might feel the same either way. There was only one thing to do and that was to get on with it; no point delaying it any more. As soon as Byrne had briefed the others and they were ready, they'd blow the bombs and go.

"Who gets the MREs?" Slater asked.

"We'll split them up," John replied. At least that way, someone who escaped would have food. People would have to share – four or five people to a single meal, if everyone got out okay. He knew they wouldn't all make it, though.

The door slammed open with an almighty  _bang_ and cracked against the concrete wall. John and Slater whirled around and saw a lumbering T-70 in the doorway.  _Shit!_  John cursed. They'd been found out. How? The machine burst through the doorway, taking several bricks with it as it forced its way through the too-small entrance, followed by a second machine. John saw a third behind it, waiting outside.

John froze, staring wide-eyed at the machines, unsure what his next move was. He'd been found out, caught; they were dead.

"Fuck you!" Slater grabbed the Desert Eagle and pointed it at the nearest machine. The pistol barked loudly inside the small room as he pulled the trigger again and again. Three .50AE rounds tore through the machine's faceplate and gouged holes in its head, shattering one of its optic sensors. The gun clicked as Slater pulled the trigger a fourth time.  _Fucking jam,_  he screamed inwardly and threw the weapon in frustration at the half-blasted face of the machine. It bounced harmlessly off the steel armour and clattered to the ground as first machine swept its hand out and backhanded Slater in the side of the face. The SEAL's head bounced against the wall and he landed in a sprawled heap on the ground; unconscious or dead, John didn't know. The other machine stepped forward and raised its gun arm at John's chest.

John stood and stared at the machines, and sighed in acceptance. He knew it was over; he was dead, and the last – the  _only_  thing he could do now was to stand his ground and die with some dignity. He breathed out slowly and braced himself for the hot lead that would pierce his body at any moment and shred him to pieces. He hoped it'd be quick, at least.

The machine suddenly lowered its mini-gun and pointed its other arm at John, instead.  _Oh, crap,_  John knew from experience what was about to happen and flinched in anticipation as a net exploded out of a square device on the machine's arm and enveloped him. A split second later John screamed out in agonised pain, writhed and twitched spasmodically as electricity coursed through his veins and set every nerve in his body alight. Finally, John could take no more and he fell to the ground, his body conceding to the pain and shut down as the pain disappeared and the world became dark and silent.

* * *

Byrne watched from the doorway with an unwavering gaze, his face grim as the machines burst inside the generator room. Others watched and gasped, moaned, and murmured around him, but Byrne remained silent, ever watchful, looking out for every detail. He heard the distinct barks of gunfire – single shots – and waited for the buzzing reports from the machines' own weapons, but it never came. Seconds later the machines emerged from the generator room, dragging the inert forms of John and Slater out in a net each. He hoped they were alive, maybe feigning unconsciousness; and one of them would suddenly blow the bombs and they'd make their escape. If one of them had the cell phone on them still it was possible. It was wishful thinking and he knew it.

All three of the machines plodded several steps away from the generator room, then turned around and raised their gun arms at the building. They fired on the building, the high pitched buzzsaw drone of their weapons shrieked through the otherwise silent night air as they fired long bursts into the generator room.

Even from where he was, Byrne could hear bullets  _pinging_  as they ricocheted off the generator itself, then a  _splash_  as the rounds penetrated and gasoline spilt from the fuel tank. The machines kept firing, sweeping their weapons up and down, left and right, as they hosed down the building with fire, tearing hundreds of chunks and holes in all four walls and turning them into Swiss cheese in a matter of seconds. The fuel caught alight and set the whole structure ablaze; Byrne saw the licking flames inside through the many holes blasted into the wall.

Byrne shook his head in dismay. All those months of hard work, of suffering, and of endless preparation had all gone down the drain. He clenched his jaw and his eyes narrowed in anger, but he held himself back, knowing there was nothing to be done about it.

The machines marched past the accommodation block, dragging John and Slater behind them as they headed straight for the hospital. The two machines standing sentry at the entrance each took a step to the side and allowed the two machines holding John and Slater inside the hospital as the third turned away and resumed its patrols.

Byrne remembered what John had told them about him being forced to haul a cart of bloodied, desecrated skeletons from the hospital to the furnaces; that they'd come from inside the building itself and that it was likely happening to those who were taken into the hospital. And now it had happened to John and Slater. He'd just wished a minute ago they were still alive, and now he took it all back. He hoped to whatever gods were out there that John and Slater were already dead, because he had a feeling John was right, that whatever was going on in there was worse than death.

"Not the end I'd want," he muttered as he went back inside, resigned to bitter defeat.

* * *

Cameron stared intently down at the scene before her, using her advanced night vision capabilities to see as easily though the pitch black night sky as if it were broad daylight. She and Courtney had followed the Osprey's flight path, dashing from building to building and crisscrossing through the obliterated ruins of the city blocks, the distance they covered on the ground was more than twice the straight line the Osprey had flown, and it had taken two hours to reach the spot and find a laying up point. Now, both she and Courtney were watching the work camp from an elevated spot on the third floor of a ruined building, five hundred metres from the perimeter wire.

Cameron was surprised when she'd found the camp. It was in the wrong place, and it was much smaller than the Century Work Camp from the future. The Valley Square Mall camp was five times the size, processing thousands of humans daily.

"Kind of ironic, isn't it?" Courtney said next to her, staring down the scope of her M4 at the camp below, now bathed in darkness and completely silent, apparently shut down for the night. Cameron turned her head and raised one eyebrow in confusion. She didn't understand irony. "I mean; Skynet using a  _hospital_  to kill people like this."

"Yes," Cameron replied. She thought she understood; hospitals were supposed to heal people, not kill them. She was momentarily pleased with herself for deciphering another strange human complexity.

Cameron had spent the last hour observing the camp and assessing its layout and defences. She'd counted ten T-70s patrolling or standing stationary within the camp, and eight more outside the camp's perimeter; protecting the installation from any intruders or rescue attempts. She'd seen no aircraft besides the Osprey prisoner transports, and only one of those hand landed, deposited its human cargo, and taken off, since night had fallen.

This, again, was unlike Century: in the future, HKs patrolled the skies and Centaur tanks protected the work camp against incursion or escapists who made it outside the perimeter wires. If this were an earlier version of the camp it should have been larger, on the Square Valley Mall, and be protected by current model HKs and T-1 or T-2 drones. This was different, and she wanted to know why.

Cameron's superior vision allowed her to see further into the camp, although it was an extreme range for her to be able to detect details at such a distance. She'd spotted someone walking through the camp who bore some resemblance to John, but she'd not seen his full facial profile yet – only having seen part of his face. She'd witnessed how the other prisoners responded to him: she couldn't hear what they said but he appeared to be a leader among the prisoners. He was roughly John's height – it was difficult to be precise at such a distance – wore a dirty, brown-stained DPM jacket, and he was thin. He also had a dark beard that concealed the lower portion of his face. Cameron had advanced facial recognition software, which compared this person to John: he bore a seventy-nine percent match to John, but that wasn't enough for Cameron. She needed to be certain he was here, and his exact location in the camp before she attempted to rescue him.

"Cameron, do you see him?" Courtney asked, looking through her rifle scope down at the camp; she could see inside but she couldn't make out as much detail as Cameron, who kept her own weapon shouldered and pretended to look through her sights.

"I don't know," she answered. Her vision was magnified to its maximum levels and she couldn't yet tell. She needed to see his face.

"Look," Courtney said, pointing down at a tiny little brick hut in the middle of the workers' half of the camp. "That little building, there." Cameron looked to the left and saw what Courtney meant: three T-70s marched towards the small structure and smashed open the door, then forced their way inside. She heard the faint pops of gunshots and saw three brief flashes from inside. She identified it as a high calibre pistol.

Seconds later the machines dragged two bodies out of the small structure – each held in a net and not moving. Cameron stared at the man, able to see his whole face now; her face-recognition software automatically ran and she recognised him instantly.  _John._ He'd lost weight and his facial hair had grown into a concealing beard, but it was him.

Cameron watched as the machines each fired a sustained burst of fire from their arm-mounted weapons, obliterating the small structure, and then dragged John and the other human towards the hospital in the corner of the camp.

"He's down there," Cameron said, already standing up and shouldering her rifle. She'd found John. He was in trouble. She had to save him.

"How can you tell?" Courtney asked. She couldn't make out faces down there.

"Better scope," Cameron lied and pointed to the sights on her SCAR-H. "We have to get him." Cameron took off and descended the bare staircase as fast as she could, jumping the last few steps in each flight as Courtney rushed to keep up. The pair of them left the building and started through the ruins, towards the camp.

"Cameron, slow down!" Courtney hissed from behind. Why was it that whenever she thought she was close to John she abandoned all other thought, even for her own safety? This  _really_ wasn't healthy; if this John Connor was brainwashing Cameron or abusing her, then she was going to give him a piece of her mind. She hoped for his sake that John Connor was actually someone worth her single minded devotion.

Deciding she was safer close to Cameron, and not seeing or hearing any machines nearby, Courtney started to run out across the open stretch of land that her companion was dashing through.

Shots rang out and the ground burst next to Cameron. Courtney dived for cover and peeked out to see what was going on. More bursts of fire peppered the ground all around them and she saw Cameron kneeling on the ground, returning fire. "What's going on?" she yelled out to Cameron.

Cameron shot back at the origin of the first rounds of fire that had nearly hit her, and scanned the area, switching her visual array to infrared when she saw no machines. She scanned from left to right and identified nine heat signatures at one hundred metres, hidden in cover among the ruins. She fired three short bursts in their direction, saw one of the heat signatures fall to the ground as her shots hit, and switched her vision back to default. She saw the snarling faces of one of the soldiers as he barked orders at the rest, and identified him.

"It's McGinty," Cameron shouted back to Courtney, who'd already shouldered her rifle and started to fire single shots in their direction. Explosions rocked the ground before them and Cameron identified the offending weapon as an M-32 grenade launcher on one of the soldiers. She raised her rifle and aimed at the soldier wielding it.

"Watch out!" Courtney screamed, ducking to the ground. Cameron saw another soldier with a shouldered Javelin to the right and threw herself behind the cover of an upturned car as the rocket shot out of the tube and obliterated the spot she'd just been standing in. They were armed with heavier weapons than last time: Cameron assessed their weapons and listed five M4 carbines – two were equipped with 40mm underslung grenade launchers, two machine guns, the M-32 and the Javelin. They were an extreme threat to her. Cameron laid flat on the ground and rolled twice to her left; she took careful aim with her rifle and fired two single shots at the soldier with the Javelin, dropping him to the floor.

More grenades struck close to Cameron's position, pelting her with shrapnel that tore into her face, neck, and chest; the force of the blasts sent her toppling backwards.

"Cameron!" Courtney saw the explosions and saw her friend fall, caught in the blasts. She was scared half to death, still, but Cameron was in trouble. She pressed the butt of her own rifle tight against her shoulder, glared hard through her sight and took careful aim at a man in a window holding a grenade launcher, as she mentally recited more of Cameron's teachings to her.  _Line up target... breathe out slowly... squeeze the trigger._ She triggered her grenade launcher and shot the projectile into the window, it struck on target with an explosion of brick fragments and dust.

Courtney fired more shots at the muzzle flashes she saw, not knowing if she'd hit them or not, then ran to Cameron's last position. She saw Cameron laid prone on her back on the ground, not moving; her clothes were burnt and torn, her face covered in cuts, her eyes wide open and vacant. "Cam... you okay?" she shook Cameron's shoulders, hoping to get a response. "No... come on, Cameron!"

Cameron sat bolt upright and stared at Courtney. "I'm okay," she said calmly as if being shot at with a grenade launcher was a daily occurrence. She picked up her SCAR-H again and assessed the battlefield; three soldiers were down. Courtney had neutralised the one with the M-32: the threat to herself was now greatly reduced.

"Stay down," Cameron told Courtney, then got back to her feet and ran into the open, firing controlled bursts at the enemy positions. She ignored the rifle fire that struck her face and chest as she advanced; each hit hurt but she could ignore it – she considered them the equivalent of what a human feel with a bee sting. She fired again and struck her one of the M4 gunners with a grenade launcher, swung her rifle out and downed the second one. Pain and damage reports filled her awareness, as well as a smouldering anger that McGinty was again stopping her from rescuing John. She wouldn't spare him again; he had to be terminated.

"Keep firing, keep firing!" she heard McGinty's voice screaming. "They're almost finished!"

Courtney looked on in complete shock as Cameron ran out and fired. She watched as bullets struck Cameron and pinged off her. Her body, her head twitched with each hit; small puffs of blood erupted with each round that struck her, yet she barely even seemed to notice. What the hell was going on?

Cameron withstood the fire that tore through her skin and bounced harmlessly off of her endoskeleton. All Courtney saw was her friend in trouble, being hurt, and she reacted: Courtney shouldered her rifle and fired shot after shot, grinning when she downed her second target. They weren't people to her; they'd tried to rape her, they'd kept people prisoner in the mine, and they were massacring Cameron. They were scum.

She took aim again but paused as she heard the all too familiar whine of jet engines behind them. She looked back and saw an HK soaring towards them from the camp. "Cameron!" Courtney yelled, too late.

The HK fired a salvo of missiles towards the battlefield and rained fire and explosions down on them. Rockets struck the buildings and the ground like meteors, fireballs erupted where they struck and spewed shrapnel and debris in all directions. Courtney saw one rocket strike close to Cameron and consume her in a mighty explosion. She felt a flash of immense heat flare up at her side, and for what seemed like a long time she was flying through the air, her stomach in her throat as she soared, then blackness overcame her as she struck the ground.

* * *

Cameron snapped her eyes open as her reboot cycle completed. The last thing she saw was a rocket streaking towards her, then nothing. She couldn't feel her leg. Damage reports and pain flooded her consciousness and she knew before she looked what had happened. Her left leg was gone, blown off at the knee. Her right knee was shattered and the whole leg almost completely immobile. She'd suffered internal damage; the power conduits were more severely ruptured, and the repairs she'd made to her armoured breastplate were ruined, her inner workings visible to anyone who looked.

Cameron rolled onto her front and crawled forward, pulling herself forward with her hands, scraping her chest and stomach against the rough, jagged ground. Her severed leg sparked and crackled when the power conduits touched the floor. She spotted Courtney laid prone and crawled towards her.

Cameron didn't usually care for people other than John, or people who were of no use to her. What happened to them never affected Cameron. This was different. Courtney lay on her back, gasping and struggling for air. Her hands clutched at a metal strut that protruded straight out of her chest. Dark arterial blood pooled behind her from her back, and seeped across her chest, soaking her clothes.

Courtney tilted her head forward and saw Cameron, and smiled despite the intense pain she was in. Then she realised Cameron was crawling, and saw the damage she'd suffered. "C... Cameron... your legs!" Cameron crawled up close to her placed a hand on Courtney's shoulder, scanning her. Her pulse was rapid, breathing shallow, and she'd lost a lot of blood. She glanced at the strut sticking out from her chest and saw it had ruptured an artery. Her expiry was imminent.

"I'm dying, right," Courtney said. It was a statement rather than a question.

"Yes," Cameron answered honestly. She didn't need to scan anymore but she kept her hand on Courtney's shoulder, close to her neck, ignoring the rapid but fading pulse.

"I don't wanna die," she cried, tears streaming from her eyes as she started shaking; she was in the worst pain she'd ever know, and she was completely, utterly terrified.

"I don't want you to," Cameron admitted. Courtney was her friend; she wanted Courtney to live almost as much as she wanted John to live. She felt the urge to protect Courtney, but she'd failed.

"Cameron..." Courtney coughed to clear the blood in her mouth and gasped for more air before she spoke again. "What's that metal in your face?" She thought at first she was delirious, but then she remembered how Cameron had taken all those shots without falling down. Now there was metal showing from a dozen holes in her face, and a big chunk of her scalp had gone above her right eye and ear, leaving a bloodied mess of tissue and hair over what was clearly metal; her clothes torn open and exposing moving parts and wires where blood and organs should have been; revealing what Cameron really was. "You... you're a machine, right?"

"Cameron nodded in reply and simply said "yes." She expected Courtney to recoil in horror, to try and pull away or so spit and curse at her. Instead she chuckled between violent, bloody coughs.

Courtney couldn't help but laugh, even though it felt like someone was twisting a knife in her chest. Cameron had been there for her, saved her life a dozen times over, saved her from being raped, and had shown her a lot, made her stronger. She wasn't one of Skynet's machines; as far as she was concerned, Cameron was her friend. Still, in hindsight, given Cameron's general oddness, it wasn't all that surprising.

"I guess that explains a couple things," Courtney smiled, not wanting to upset Cameron, knowing she  _could_  be upset. She laid her head back and felt herself giving in to the urge to just go to sleep. She locked eyes with her friend as everything faded to black and went dark.

Cameron felt her pulse disappear. She'd lost too much blood and her heart had stopped. Courtney was gone. Cameron gently closed the lids over Courtney's bright green eyes, the sparkle already gone and turning dull. She then swept bricks and debris over the body, concealing it from view. To Cameron, bodies were just bones and meat. Courtney was different. She didn't know why, but it was. Scavengers would quickly find Courtney if she was left out in the open, that was unacceptable to Cameron. She felt an urge to protect the body, even though Courtney was dead. It was irrational and she didn't understand it.

Cameron couldn't identify what she felt. Courtney was her friend and now she was dead. She was sad, she knew that. But it was more. She'd never lost a friend before – never  _had_ a friend, apart from John. She'd told people before she was sorry for their loss. Now it was her loss. Added to that, she realised, she was too badly damaged to rescue John. She'd fail and be destroyed. She'd lost Courtney and John.

Only one course of action remained. She was severely damaged, she needed repairs: she had to return to Cheyenne Mountain.

After several minutes of crawling and searching, Cameron found what was left of her severed leg. It had been blown off at the knee; the joint was destroyed but the leg itself could be repaired. Cameron slipped off her pack and placed the leg inside, then zipped it up to keep it from falling out; jagged metal edges and wires protruded from the top of the pack. She shouldered her rifle and let it hang beside her as she crawled forwards.

Chris McGinty pinned to the ground, a large slab of concrete pinning his lower half to the floor, blood pooling out beneath him. He reached out for a pistol with his right hand; the left arm visibly broken and jutting out at an angle. Jagged bone stuck out through the skin and he barely managed to keep himself from screaming as his movement jarred the injury. His legs were pinned under a large slab of building, and they felt broken, too. He stretched out for the gun and fell just short. He grunted and stretched as far as he could, his body burning and screaming as he tried again and failed.

He looked to his left and saw Corey, half his head missing and the Javelin still cradled in his arms. He knew now he'd been wrong to go after the androids like that: they were too dangerous. He should have fallen back, recruited more men; gone after them with an army instead of a measly squad. That was his mistake, and it had cost him and his men everything.

He was dying and he knew it. But it wasn't going to be quick, or painless. His legs and arm were broken, he couldn't move, and Century City was full of scavengers. There was blood all around and packs of dogs would be driven to the scent like a shark. They'd rip him apart and eat him alive; he'd seen it before in Carson City. He wasn't going to go out like that. He made one last attempt to reach out for the weapon, and gave it everything he had, but his fingertips didn't even graze the gun.

He saw movement among the rubble and his heart soared. Maybe it was one of his men; maybe they'd survived. As it came closer he saw it was one of the damn androids, crawling on its front, missing a leg. The brunette one; the one he'd tried to fuck.  _That's it,_  he thought. She'd kill him in a heartbeat: it's what she did.

"Android!" he shouted out at it, feeling some small sense of satisfaction that it was so severely damaged; he hoped he or his men had done that, and not the HK.

Cameron turned her head and saw McGinty laid trapped beneath a chunk of concrete. He was the only one of his men left alive, as far as she could tell. The only other signs of life nearby were three dogs – two Doberman Pinschers and a German Shepherd – hiding among the ruins, snarling and salivating, their eyes darted from her to McGinty and back again. They were likely shying away from her, afraid. She knew they were targeting McGinty; they would wait until she was gone before they attacked.

"Kill me," McGinty called out, desperation in his voice as he heard the dogs, too. "Come on, do me, tin can. It's what you do, isn't it? Please!"

Cameron turned away and resumed crawling. She ignored his pleas for death; he was mortally injured, he wouldn't survive. And he wasn't a threat anymore.

Cameron slowly crawled through the ruins of Century on her stomach, pulling herself along with her hands and elbows, and dragging the dead weight of her legs behind her, slowly inching her way forward. She had to reach the Topkick and drive it back to Cheyenne Mountain so she could repair herself and return. She ignored the faint screams, shouting, the sounds of meat and cloth tearing and canine snarls in the distance behind her. She could move her remaining ankle but her knee movement was restricted to a range of four degrees. Loss, grief, and pain overwhelmed Cameron as she inched forwards. She'd lost Courtney and her chances of saving John were marginally above zero. She would do everything possible, but she knew her fuel cell would expire and she would die trying.


	24. Interrogation

George looked down at the two humans the machine guards had dragged into the hospital. They lay still, stunned into unconsciousness by the machine's electrified stun-nets and kept under sedation. One older, one younger; both had filthy, matted locks of scraggly, dark and matted hair and matching beards from what was likely months without shaving or even washing. Their faces and hands were covered in dirt and they both stank of sweat and body odour.

They were clearly both soldiers: both had worn camouflage-pattern DPM jackets, combat trousers and black boots when they'd arrived inside the building. Now they'd been stripped to their underwear and strapped to the beds. Tubes ran into and out of their bodies, connected to various drips and catheters feeding nutrients to keep them alive and removing waste from their bladders and bowels. Numerous machines monitored their conditions and would alert them to anything unforeseen.

George let out a slight smile; he had to give Daniel and his men some credit: they'd performed this routine flawlessly. The ward was full of men and women similarly sedated and restrained in beds throughout the ward, all of them taken from the worker's side of the camp into the hospital and being farmed for their blood; an all-important component in their newest machines. The machines' construction was on schedule, and he had to admit he was impressed with Daniel's work on the new terminators.

He was  _not_  impressed, however, with the glaring lapse of security that had gone on right under Daniel's nose this whole time. If Emily hadn't taken it upon herself to go over the security footage from the CCTV cameras and spotted these two continuously scurrying back and forth and disappearing into the generator room – which Daniel should have demolished before the camp had started operating – then they could have continued unchallenged.

"Do you mind telling me," George said to Daniel, stood behind him in silence. "Exactly how you failed to notice some of the prisoners scavenging and scurrying around? Are you  _trying_  to ruin our work, or are you really that incompetent?" George turned and glared at the human.

"You're serious?" Daniel coughed, incredulous. These damn infiltrators were so fucking full of themselves, he couldn't believe it: they expected him and his tiny, overworked staff to keep going like machines. "There were only five of us running this whole place before you came expect us to tend to the machines, harvest these guys, cater for the slaves out there, and keep an eye on what they're all doing at all times?"

"You sided with our Lord to save yourself, and Skynet let you live because you're useful." George stared at Daniel with sly smile and an evil, murderous glint in his eye. "If you can't do your job then you've outlived your purpose." If Daniel thought he was going to go easy on him or give him points for the work he'd done on the machines he was wrong. The second the Greys were no longer useful he'd lay them all out in beds next to these two newcomers and bleed them dry.

George turned away from the Grey and marched out of the ward. He was curious to see how the new terminators were coming along, but he had a more important task to accomplish now. Daniel's screw-up had almost cost them dearly, and he had to make sure it never happened again. He took an elevator to the ground floor, waiting patiently as the car slowly descended.

As soon as the doors opened he strolled out into the corridor and made his way through the almost eerily silent hospital to the main reception area that they'd converted into a machine shop for the T-70s. Crates of 7.62mm ammunition were neatly stacked along one wall, along with boxes of spare machine parts and a recharger for their power cells. The T-70s had a limited combat life, only a few days before their fuel cells depleted. The guards would be relieved by another machine and they'd return to the hospital, where a service drone would remove their fuel cell and replace it with a fresh one, then take the empty and recharge it.

George marched up to the lumbering, motionless form of the two-handed T-70, and craned his head upwards, trying with difficulty to maintain eye contact with a machine that was just under two feet taller than him.

"Search the camp for weapons," George spoke to the machine. It didn't understand the actual words he spoke, but he transmitted his orders via his neural implant – the tiny chip Skynet had inserted into his brain allowed him to issue orders to machines in the future. In the present they'd had a hand in designing every unmanned air and ground vehicle and built them to not only be accessible to Skynet's control, but also that of the Infiltrators'. He almost literally willed the machine to do his bidding. He knew that it understood his orders, even though the machine made no gesture of acknowledgement; no nod of the head to show it understood. It simply turned away from him and marched out through the two sets of blacked out automatic doors and made its way through the camp.

George had seen the security footage from the camp, and although two of the ringleaders had been captured and now lay under sedation, it was impossible to know how many others were in on whatever exactly they were doing; it was too dangerous to keep them around. He'd have the machines place all the workers into the other half of the camp and take sixty of the strongest condemned prisoners and assign them to disposal duties, granting them a stay of execution. Better to wipe the slate clean and start afresh than risk them trying something else. It was a horrible waste of materiel, and the newly selected workers would be weaker slower, and the efficiency of the camp would suffer as a result, but that was irrelevant. These new terminators they were building would help secure victory for Skynet in the end, and that was all that mattered.

* * *

Cameron crawled through the devastated landscape of Century City, propelling herself forward using only her hands and elbows as she pulled the dead weight of her legs behind her. Her DPM jacket was torn and the skin from her fingertips up to her elbows was covered in abrasions from jagged shards of glass and metal. Crawling wasn't difficult for her but it was slow; it had taken five hours to pull herself slightly less than three miles. Her pace would have been faster if not for the machine patrols she'd had to avoid and the hundreds of obstacles that she could have stepped over before but now had to navigate herself over or around. Each one only took seconds but their cumulative toll had slowed her considerably.

Cameron knew what loneliness was; she'd learned long ago what it was to have no friends. She felt it again now, more acutely than before. Courtney was dead and John's chances of survival were miniscule. Cameron didn't understand futility: she'd never stop until she'd rescued him or her power cell depleted and she was rendered permanently offline.

Cameron heard the high pitched whine of HK jet engines approaching overhead. Cameron turned left and crawled faster, pulling herself towards an overturned ambulance. Her recent experiences with HKs had made her adverse to the aerial predators, conditioning her to avoid contact with them. They registered as a far greater threat to her now than they'd been before. She pulled herself into the ambulance's cab, through more broken glass, and curled her body beneath the passenger-side door, concealing as much of herself as she could under it. She couldn't move her remaining leg so she had to manually bend it and tuck it back with her hands to curl herself up further.

The HK flew a low, slow circle overhead, then lifted into the air, banked right and launched a missile at a target Cameron couldn't see. Gunfire sounded from another direction, forcing the HK to turn and evade. Cameron recognised it as .50 calibre ammunition. She poked her head out the empty windscreen and watched the rounds streak upwards from behind a building a block away and hit one of the engines, which erupted with a loud  _bang_  and spewed out a thick plume of trailing black smoke. The machine lifted up unsteadily into the air and turned to evade the gunfire. A second gun opened up from out of Cameron's sight and harassed the aircraft further, causing it to evade two separate enemies; unable to target one without being shot by the other.

Cameron saw movement in her periphery and identified another human three hundred metres away, keeping close to the buildings for cover as he shouldered a surface-to-air missile launcher and pointed it upwards. She knew what would happen: the humans had taken the HK by surprise and would shoot it down while it was distracted by the two separate volleys of gunfire. Skynet would mobilize a second HK and ground units to search and clear the area, and she'd have to wait until they passed before she could continue crawling towards the Topkick. Cameron didn't want to wait; every moment she waited drained her power cell further and reduced the chances of her returning to Cheyenne Mountain.

She sat up and shouldered her SCAR-H, pointed it at the missile-wielding human and tapped the trigger twice. She saw the human drop to the ground with a faint cry as her weapon barked loudly, the report seemingly gone unnoticed among the gunfire in the distance. The irony that she had to assist a Skynet machine and attack human fighters was lost on her. They didn't matter, only John. The HK turned and fired a second missile towards the other humans Cameron couldn't see, and the sounds of gunfire dwindled. A third missile silenced the other position and the aircraft pulled away, smoke still trailing from its right engine, and flew out of sight. Cameron slung her rifle over her back and dragged herself back outside the ambulance, crawling forward once again.

Cameron crawled away from the scene, faster than before. She met no further interruptions and dragged herself through the city as the commercial district faded away behind her and the damage grew less extensive as she made her way through the residential areas, devoid of any sign of movement – human or machine. After another mile the houses she crawled past seemed almost undamaged compared to the devastation she'd left behind her. Shattered windows and the occasional crack and hole in a roof or wall from debris thrown by the blast waves were the only signs of any damage at all. Large front lawns were covered in yellowed dead grass and children's toys littered several of the suburban dwellings, likely left and dropped moments after the bombs had fallen.

She made her way to a large detached house with a two-car garage; the wide stainless steel door wasn't completely closed, sticking out slightly at the bottom. She reached out to grasp it then pulled it all the way open. The door swung upwards and revealed the black Topkick where she and Courtney had left it. After they'd parked the 4x4 they'd siphoned gas from several other remaining cars in the neighbouring houses, so they had a full tank and a spare can in the back seat.

Cameron pulled herself towards the car and opened the driver's-side door. She dragged herself up onto the seat and swung her remaining leg into the footwell, then placed her pack and rifle onto the passenger seat beside her. She could barely move her knee, but the hip and ankle joints still functioned. She turned on the ignition and shifted her position on the seat to give her remaining foot better purchase of the gas pedal. She pressed down on the gas with difficulty, but she managed to push the pedal to the floor. She'd have to use the one foot to control both the gas and the brake.

The Topkick slowly pulled out of the garage and down the drive, the lights off and the vehicle barely visible in the fading darkness. Cameron drove out through the deserted and lifeless outskirts of Century City, passing house after house, street after street; all completely empty and devoid of life. She drove north, leaving Century and LA County in her wake.

* * *

Derek stood on the steeply sloping mountainside next to Perry, almost wishing he'd not bothered to come out and take a look. They crouched well away from the crater made by the railgun and waited for the inevitable explosion that would rock the mountain below their feet anytime now.

"Coming up on nineteen minutes," Perry said as he glanced down at his watch. Skynet had upped its rate of fire to one round every twenty minutes – increasing its attacks on the mountain by a third. Derek crouched down behind the boulder they were using as cover and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

"You won't see it," Perry said. "The round impacts at over Mach. 7."

"I'm not looking for it," Derek replied curtly. He scanned across the landscape surrounding the mountain. He counted four pairs of T-2s patrolling along the highway to the east, plus several more pairs to the north. In all he counted twenty of the tank killers, and that was only what he could see. He guessed there was at least that again patrolling the south and west sides. "Looking for the machines," he elaborated.

"They're keeping their distance," Perry said. He was thankful for that, at least. The machines could have attacked them now and they'd be hard pressed to fight them all off. "One thing I don't get," Perry said to Derek, turning to look at the grizzled resistance fighter. "Skynet could rush us right now and probably take the mountain in a day. What's it playing at?"

"Doesn't want to waste machines," Derek replied.

"I don't buy that; back in Fort Carson, the machines shot their own to pieces when we used them as cover. They don't care about their own."

"They don't," Derek agreed. "But Skynet's not gonna throw away its own machines, either; not very  _efficient."_  He figured that's what drove Skynet's decisions, anyway.

A sonic boom tore through the air and the side of the mountain exploded once again, hurling rock fragments and dust into the air. The ground trembled beneath their feet and Perry held out a hand to steady himself against the rock as he almost toppled over. Derek had already braced himself against a rock behind him and only wobbled slightly.

"Let's go," Perry got up and started jogging towards the impact crater. Derek followed close behind, easily finding purchase on the steeply sloping rock; years of running and marching over the vast debris fields and mountainous ruined buildings of LA in his own time had made him as surefooted as a mountain goat. The pair of them quickly made their way to the impact site, and the sight of it up close was a shock to both of them. The crater was easily sixty feet in diameter at the top, narrowing as it went deeper inside.

"That's gotta go halfway through the mountain," Derek commented. He couldn't even see the bottom.

"They're making their own entrance," Perry said, repeating what they already knew. Still, the sheer sight of it was both impressive and utterly depressing. From the looks of it, Skynet planned to send an army through the hole it was punching through the mountain. The machines would pour in through the wide entrance, down into the base, and wipe them all out inside the mountain. Even the most basic infantryman knew it was easier to fight their way down a structure rather than up it; Skynet would obviously know it too, Perry figured. The tunnel entrances were too narrow and too easily defended; even with what little they had left they could decimate a legion of machines if they tried to take them through the front door. Even if the machines succeeded, the blast doors could be sealed and they had nothing that could penetrate those.

 _"Colonel Perry,"_ the infantry commander's earpiece buzzed in his ear, loud enough for Derek to hear.

"Tell me its good news," Perry replied with a sigh. The sight of the hole had left him feeling completely drained.

_"Yes sir; we've got one of the radios working and we've managed to establish contact with-"_

"I'll be right there," Perry interrupted, not even bothering to ask who they were in contact with; anyone was better than no one.

The pair of them rushed down the mountainside, having to pause again several times whilst more heavy rounds smashed into their base and slowly tore the mountain apart. When they were inside the two highest ranking men in Cheyenne Mountain ran through the corridors, almost crashing into several people when they turned corners, and both slammed the double doors of the command centre as they hurriedly entered.

The room itself was a wreck: George's rampage had smashed every computer, every radio and radar console, even the large flat-screen TVs that hung from one of the walls had fallen victim to his carnage. One of the soldiers and a civilian stood behind a single radio console that looked like it would never work again. The whole thing was a mess of shattered plastic and protruding wires. The smell of burnt metal indicated that some serious soldering work had been done.

"We had to cannibalize components from several other consoles to get this one working, and-"

"It works," Perry quickly interrupted. That's all he needed to know. He picked up the mic and pressed the com button. "This is Colonel Perry, 4th Infantry in Cheyenne Mountain, who am I speaking to?"

 _"About time, colonel,"_  the voice on the other end crackled through the speakers. The radio was cobbled together and so broken that the voice was distorted almost beyond recognition and surrounded by static.  _"This is Captain Wallace of the USS_ Nimitz.  _I understand you're in a spot of trouble?"_

"You could say that, captain," Perry grinned. Derek rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest; they had no time for pleasantries like this. "Get to the point," he said in a low voice to Perry.

"We're in the shit, Captain Wallace," Perry said bluntly, much to Derek's approval. He didn't see the point in dancing around the fact, and the longer they waited meant more time for Skynet to punch through the mountain. "Don't tell me where you are; Skynet's regained control of its satellites and this channel may not be secure. We need extraction soon as possible: Cheyenne Mountain's under attack and we can't hold out much longer."

_"I don't think that'll be possible, colonel. We're down to just our choppers and a handful of Hornets; I don't wanna lose anymore aircraft. If you can make it to the coast I can arrange pickup."_

Derek snatched the mic from Perry's grasp. They had a chance to get out of the mountain, and to try and find John; he wasn't going to let some dickhead floating around on a giant tub at sea stop him now. "Listen, Wallace," he growled. "If it wasn't for Connor you'd still be floating out at sea, sitting on your hands. Time to return the favour."

Perry looked up at Derek, incredulous, but he couldn't care less. They needed out of Cheyenne Mountain and there was no way they could walk or drive out. They had nowhere to go and the carrier was their only option. He needed their help to find John, too; a hundred or so marines would come in handy trying to find and rescue John, wherever the hell he was.

_"Tell you what, if you can secure a landing zone and arrange a safe place to refuel halfway, I'll send the birds in to pick you up. How many of you are there?"_

"Sixty," Derek replied. "When can you get here?"

_"I'll give you forty-eight hours to report a clear LZ, then we'll come pick you up."_

Perry frowned at his reply; Skynet's railgun would pave punched through the mountain by then and sent a legion of machines against them. Two days, and  _then_  they'd send the helicopters in – guessing at three days, total, until they arrived; his men wouldn't last that long. He grabbed the mic from Derek.

"We won't last that long, Wallace."

 _"That's the best I can do, Perry,"_ Wallace said calmly.  _"It'll take us that long to get in range of the coast and strip our choppers down to make the trip. Take it or leave it."_

Derek grabbed Perry's hand holding the mic and pressed the colonel's thumb over the com button, then pulled his arm close to his face. Perry tried to wrestle it away from Derek but the resistance fighter caught him by surprise. "We'll take it," Derek said.

" _Roger that. Next contact in twenty-four hours."_

The radio went blank as Wallace cut off the transmission from his end. Perry turned towards Derek, incredulous. "We can't wait that long," he insisted. "As soon as Skynet's through the mountain it'll attack. We both know that's going to be less than forty-eight hours."

Derek shoved a computer terminal from one of the desks, sending the already broken device crashing to the ground and shattering it further. He tore a large map of Colorado from the wall and placed it down on the now-cleared surface. Perry stood over the map and watched him.

"We need to buy time," Derek said, his finger pointing at a point on the map, the legend  _Schriever AFB_ just above his fingernail. "I'll take a squad inside the base; take out their fuel dump. Without it their aircraft don't fly: without air cover Skynet won't launch an attack, and _Nimitz's_ helicopters can fly through Colorado without being shot down."

"That's suicide, Baum. You know that."

"We're dead anyway," Derek said curtly, turning to march out of the command centre and intent on finding Davenport and filling him in on his plan.

He'd been on plenty of supposed one-way missions over the years, and he'd come back from every one of them. He'd survived the rescue mission in Eagle Rock Bunker, where he'd met Jesse and been infected by Skynet's bio-weapon. He'd taken on T-888s with nothing more than a pistol and survived, and he'd gone one on one with Cromartie and lived to tell the tale. Sneaking into a prominent Skynet base to blow their fuel supply should be a milk run compare to some he'd been on. Besides, he thought; it wasn't as if they had much choice: if he didn't, then they'd all die when Skynet finished peeling the mountain open and the machines stormed inside.

 _Dead either way, no matter what I do,_  he thought. It was just like being back in his original future.  _No place like home,_  he thought grimly.

* * *

John struggled to slowly peel his eyelids open and was rewarded with a blinding white light and burning pain in his eyes and the back of his head for his efforts, accompanied by an instant bout of nausea that send the world spinning around him. He instantly screwed them shut again. His head pounded, his throat was like a desert, and he felt dizzy and disoriented. The worst hangover he'd ever felt; the morning after he'd got drunk and shoved Cameron through the shower screen felt  _pleasant_  compared to now. Another round of pain tore through his head as an invisible lumberjack ran a chainsaw through his skull, and he instinctively reached up to clutch the back of his head, but his hands stopped short, inches from his side, with a  _clink_  of metal on metal and the feeling of something digging into his wrists.

John's eyes snapped open and he looked away from the bright white light shining down on him, his eyes starting to come into focus as he took in his surroundings. He was surrounded by other beds, occupied by people lying prone and unmoving. Medical equipment surrounded him and he saw various drips running into his body. One above on his right was filled with a clear solution that ran into his right arm.

He didn't recognise where he was at all. Clearly he was in a hospital or infirmary of some kind, but where? He didn't recognise it at all.  _Maybe someone found the camp and rescued us?_ But if that were the case, he thought, why am I handcuffed? It was too extreme a measure to make sure he didn't fall out of bed. He tried to swivel his feet around and found they were similarly cuffed.

He looked around and saw nobody up. No doctors, no nurses, nothing. He saw Slater laid on a bed opposite, unconscious and connected to the same kinds of drips that were hooked up to him. The memory of what happened came crashing back and he remembered the machines breaking into the generator room. They'd failed and been caught, and he was in the hospital inside Century Work Camp, he realised.  _What happens, now?_ He asked himself. And why the hell were they keeping him alive? He remembered the bloodied skeletons he'd had to dispose of before, and realised whatever happened to them was going to happen to him, too. He had to get out.

John tried to sit up but the nausea returned and his stomach muscles cramped, forcing him to flop back down onto the bed. Instead he propped himself up onto his elbows and looked across to Slater.

"Slater," he hissed. No response. The man was still unconscious. After the blow to the head he'd seen Slater take, he wasn't surprised. How long had they been out for, anyway? Minutes, hours,  _days,_ even? Judging from the drips he guessed days; nobody would go to the trouble of hooking you up to an IV for a few minutes or even hours, assuming the drips were feeding him.  _"Slater!"_  John hissed again, harsher this time.

Doors opened at the end of the ward to reveal two men – one blonde and one with auburn hair – and a woman, another blonde. From their body language, John had to guess the blonde man was in charge. He marched in front of the others, a confident gait and a hard, intense glare in his eyes. John saw a look of contempt in his face as the man locked eyes with him.

"You're awake," George said. He hadn't expected that; something must have gone wrong with the sedative drip. Daniel had told him the subjects remained under sedation during the procedure.

"Who are you?" John asked, trying to work out what the hell was going on. "What is this place?"

George ignored him and turned towards Slater, inspecting the man. Daniel checked the IV drip nodding at George as he saw it was empty. "That's another unit consumed," Daniel said to George as he disconnected the bag. "Should I connect another?"

"What's going on?" John asked, still disoriented and utterly confused. Who are you people?" George turned to John and lashed out, backhanding John hard in the side of the face and sending him reeling to one side. John's face burned from the stinging pain; he felt like Cameron had hit him, not a human. This guy was strong. If he wasn't chained to the bed he'd have been knocked off of it. He resolved to stay quiet for now, try and work out what was happening, and how he was going to find a way out of this place.

"I'm George," he introduced himself to John in an overly patronising voice, the way an adult would speak to a very small child. "This is Emily, and Daniel. Happy now?"

"And no," George turned back to Daniel. "Let's prep him for surgery and then drain him; get all the blood we can out of him to add to the rest."

"And him?" Emily gestured to John.

"Him, too," George nodded.

 _Surgery?_  John's eyes widened in horror at the mere mention of the word; what the  _fuck_  was going on?

John made no attempt to ask anything else as more people entered the ward with a pair of gurneys. He felt far too weak to resist or to even think about trying to get away as they removed the catheters from his body; he winced in pain as they did so. They released his handcuffs and lifted him off his bed and onto one of the gurneys. He lay there, unmoving as they secured him to it with thick leather straps over his thighs, waist, and chest. They then reattached the cuffs to the metal railings on the side. John's only movement was turning his head to the side as he watched them do the same to Slater. He hoped the SEAL was only feinting, that he'd burst out of bed and jump them, but it was a fantasy and he knew it.

John remained silent as his gurney was pushed out of the ward and through a long, sterile corridor. The windows were all blacked out so he had no idea how high up they were. They stopped at an elevator and John still kept quiet. His body was weak and unresponsive but his mind was ablaze. He concentrated on absorbing every detail he could. He watched as one of them pressed the button for the elevator, watched the small LED display changing as the car travelled up to them: _G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5._ The elevator doors opened and the two gurneys, plus the three original people who'd come into the ward after he'd come to.

The doors closed behind them and they descended in silence. John watched the display inside the elevator as they rode it down, and noted that they stopped on the second floor.  _No chance of jumping out a window,_  he thought. Even if he somehow managed to get free, he might survive the drop but he'd break his legs and who knew what else, and get gunned down by the machines.

They left the elevator and John was pushed through another corridor, crossing a corner and passing under several signs hanging from the ceiling that were marked  _'Operating Theatre.'_ John concentrated on remembering the route from the elevator, in case he managed to get free at some point.  _Down the corridor, turn left at the end, pass two corners on the right... turn right at the third... twenty metres down the next corridor..._

They passed into the operating theatre and the first thing John noticed was how cold and sterile it was, even for an OR. Everything was clean, gleaming stainless steel; walls, metal tables, surgical instruments. In the middle of the room was a single operating table, and a secondary surface next to it, topped with scalpels, forceps, and various other surgical tools. Clear glass vials filled with liquid stood atop the surface; he had no idea what they were for. The room smelled of disinfectant and antiseptic.

"Him first," George pointed at Slater, and Emily and Daniel unstrapped the SEAL and moved him onto the operating table.

"Want to do the honours?" Daniel picked up a scalpel and offered it handle-first to George.

"You go ahead," George waved it away. Daniel had done the procedure before and knew how it went; it was one thing the human could probably do better than him. "Emily, if you'd like to assist?" The blonde woman stood on the opposite side of Slater and looked to Daniel for instruction. The Grey was in charge, now.

John watched in horror as they stood over Slater and held a scalpel above his stomach. "Stop it!" John shouted out as Daniel lowered the scalpel and made an incision, cutting through the muscles of Slater's stomach. Slater suddenly opened his eyes and roared out in white-hot agony, screaming at the top of his lungs and bucking on the table in pain and abolute terror.

"Let him go!" John screamed out. George sneered callously and lashed out once more, punching John in the head with enough force to knock the gurney over on its side. John crashed to the ground and his shoulder and face smacked into the floor and took the brunt of the fall. Starbursts swirled around him as he lay there in a daze. He heard Slater still screaming, then his, replaced with a pained liquid gurgle.

"Hold him still!" he heard Daniel shout out. John struggled in his restraints and managed to look up to see George holding Slater down as he writhed and bucked and gurgled in pain, and watched as Daniel and Emily pulled out lengths of ropy, coiling grey intestines from his abdomen, still twitching as they lifted the mass clear from his body and placed it into one of the liquid vats.

John kicked and pulled hard against his restraints, struggling to break free and come to Slater's aid, even though he knew it was too late. He couldn't take it anymore, his gut swirled around his stomach and clenched, and he threw up. Vile, bitter liquid spewed from his mouth and he retched again and again, emptying his stomach onto the floor and leaving the acrid taste of bile in his mouth as his stomach, chest and throat convulsed, retching nothing but air until his gut cramped from the strain.

Slater's choked gurgling had stopped and John saw they'd filled up the other vats with his organs: liver, kidneys, stomach, bladder... all had been placed inside clear liquid inside the glass containers.

George pulled John's gurney upright and positioned it so John saw everything: he saw Slater's open body and watched impotently as they slit his throat and collected the blood in a large funnel that channelled down into a large plastic bladder.

Emily collected the container and placed it onto a trolley, as well as the glass vials holding Slater's organs. George pressed a button on the intercom by the wall. "This is George, I need someone in the OR to pick up a body and take it down to the kitchen."

"Kitchen?" John whispered as he realised with disgust what exactly he'd been eating these past months. "Why?" John asked, not caring how whiny or pathetic he sounded. He was completely beyond caring, now.

"Your organs will serve our new soldiers, to supplement their organic sheath."

' _Organic sheath?'_  John shook his head. That was how Cameron described her flesh; they were building machines: that had to mean that they were...

"Greys!" John blurted out, as the dots connected in his head. The shock of everything that was happening had stopped him from seeing it, but now it struck him with sickening clarity: they were helping Skynet. "You're Greys."

"How'd  _you_  know about Greys?" George snapped, utterly shocked at the kid's words. He'd been resourceful enough to plan an escape from the camp, to somehow put together crude items he'd found into improvised explosives and plant them throughout the camp the fence, and he knew about Greys. "You're from the future."He must have been sent back shortly before the end of the war. Only TechCom's elite were sent back on missions.

"The future?" Emily said, not quite believing it. The chances of a TechCom operative from the future being in their camp were too small to be coincidence.

"Harvesting his organs will have to wait," George said. This was far too important. Every instinct in him, his training, his religious beliefs, commanded him to slit the kid's throat from ear to ear. One of Connor's commandos; the most intelligent and resourceful soldiers humanity had produced in the war. He was dangerous to their plans, very dangerous. They needed to know what he was doing here. "Take him to Ward Three," he said.

Emily nodded once and turned John's gurney around, pushed it out of the operating room and through more sets of corridors. John forced the fear and anger deep down into his gut and once again concentrated as hard as he could on memorising his route. They entered the elevator and travelled up one floor to the third, then rolled out and crossed more hallways until they arrived in another ward like the one he'd woken up in.

Unlike his previous ward, this one was completely unoccupied. John realised he had no idea whether it was night or day; they'd taken his watch and the windows were blacked out like before; the room was illuminated only by the lights hanging from the ceiling. Emily undid John's handcuffs and pulled off the leather straps restraining him to the gurney. As soon as they were off John shot up and lashed out a fist as hard as he could, but Emily lazily caught it in her hand and squeezed her fingers over his hand, clamping down like a vice. John hissed and winced in pain as she slowly started to crush the bones of his hand. He tried to pull away but she was far stronger than her slender frame let on. Like Cameron, he thought. Were they Greys? She was too strong to be human, but she didn't act like a machine.

Emily lowered his hand in front of his face and kept the pressure steady on John's hand, bringing his carpal bones to the brink of fracture. "Nice try," she said. She let go of his hand and stepped back, then pulled out a pistol from the waistline of her trousers and pointed it at John. "Next time I'll put one in each kneecap," she glared at him, then tossed the handcuffs to him. "Onto the bed and cuff yourself to it," she ordered.

John complied, knowing he had no choice in the matter. He stepped off the gurney and plodded a few paces on the cold floor towards the bed she'd indicated, sat down and placed each hand into one half of the cuffs and then attached the right one securely to one of the railings on the side of the bed, designed to keep people from falling out. He noted that the rail was ever so slightly loose; it wobbled the tiniest bit as he moved his arm.

"Word of advice," Emily put down the gun and leaned over John to attach the second cuff, her piercingly bright blue eyes bored into his and he felt a wave of hate emanating from her. "Tell us the truth and you'll be  _a lot_  better off."

"You're gonna kill me, anyway," John said sullenly. After seeing what they did to Slater he was under no illusion about what they'd do to him. They clearly held human life in even less regard than the machines. To the machines they were just targets: John could already tell that these Greys, from how they'd acted, despised him for being human. He'd seen a certain satisfaction as they'd dissected Slater and cut him to pieces.

"True," she shrugged. "But give it a few days and you'll be begging us to kill you. Trust me."

"He won't talk," George stepped into the room with a tray full of various implements and tools. John saw several syringes, scalpels, and a whole host of things he didn't even want to know what they were. "Not yet, anyway." TechCom soldiers were trained to resist interrogation as long as possible, but everyone cracked eventually: it just showed how weak humans were. Charles Fischer – head of the Greys, had educated his brothers and sisters well on how to get under peoples' skin and make them tick. All it took was finding the right method and a little time.

George pushed the tray in front of John and picked up a scalpel at the foot of the bed, then left the tools on a table at the foot of his bed. "Let's start with what you  _can_  tell me," George said, holding the scalpel up in front of him, the gleaming metal reflected the light and John knew the man would have no qualms about using it on him – he'd already seen them cut up Slater. They wanted him alive, though, so they'd cut him, badly; but keep him alive while they did it. He didn't doubt for a second they were experts on how to do just that.

"Name and rank?" George asked, almost conversationally. John looked up at George, his eyes sullen and his face blank. He couldn't say anything; they'd kill him the second they found out who he was. While he was alive he still had a chance of escape.

 _"Your name?"_  George demanded, sterner this time. Again, John said nothing. George lowered the scalpel to the inside of his thigh and pressed the blade down; the razor-sharp blade cut through layers of skin and muscle with ease. John grit his teeth and clenched his whole body against the pain, balling his hands into fists and screwing his eyes shut as the knife cut through nerves in the skin and set them ablaze. George slowly drew the blade down his thigh, leaving a shallow cut three inches long down the front of John's leg. He twisted the scalpel blade back and forth and John whimpered in response. The worst part was he knew this was the tip of the iceberg; they'd have far worse in mind later.

"Why can't you just tell us your name?" Emily asked. Why was he letting himself suffer for something as paltry as a name?

"I can't," John shook his head. Emily drew her fist back and smashed it into John's right eye. Starbursts exploded all around him John fought to keep consciousness. His eye immediately began to bruise and swell up and started throbbing painfully. He felt like he'd been hit by a freight train.

The second strike smashed into his gut even harder than the first and forced the air from his lungs. John tried to clutch at his stomach but with his hands restrained all he could do was struggle to suck in air, looking like a fish flapping out of water. Finally, after several seconds, he managed to draw in breath again, and the aching, crushing pain in his chest started to slowly subside.

"Leave him," George commanded Emily. She looked at him questioningly then stood back. George picked out a square grey device the size of a car battery and placed it on the table. He started connecting wires to sockets in the side of the object, and attached electrodes to the free ends of the wires. John recognised what it was immediately; he'd seen Cameron working on them before when she'd fortified Cheyenne Mountain's defences: a T-2 power cell.

George nodded at Emily and she pulled down John's boxer shorts, then took an electrode and secured it firmly to his testicles. "Is it cold in here?" she looked down at his crotch as she worked and smirked at John, not a trace of humour in her face or voice as she spoke, her eyes still cold and glaring. "Those poor tunnel-rat girls; guess they're not missing you much."

John said nothing, knowing she was trying to goad him into reacting. He decided his best bet was to say as little as possible, to seem like the dumb soldier who didn't know what the hell he was doing here. Watching as Emily attached the other electrodes to his stomach, behind his back - just over his kidneys, and onto his chest, he didn't know how long he'd be able to keep that act up.  _Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it._ He remembered the words his mom had taught him, given to her by his father, and kept repeating them in his mind over and over again, hoping it would help.

George picked up a small black remote control and sat down on a chair facing John. "Clear," he told Emily. She backed away a few paces and he looked down at the remote; there were a handful of buttons and he considered for a moment which one to press. He grinned as he made his choice and pressed the button.

Lightning struck John's loins and surged upwards, tearing violently through him as he lost control of his body; agonising at it was, he couldn't even scream. He felt like his loins were on fire; the pain unimaginable, unendurable...

George let go of the button and the shock subsided, John stopped convulsing and finally manage to draw a ragged breath. Tears flowed from his eyes and John lay there, struggling to catch his breath and bring his pain under control. His balls still felt like they were on fire; he couldn't see them but the felt like they'd swollen to twice their normal size. The sheets beneath him were cold and wet, and he realised with humiliation that he'd pissed himself.

"Once again: your name?" George asked. When John gave no answer he pressed another button, and fire raged through John's back and tore into his kidneys. He convulsed again and this time managed to cry out in pain as he bucked and writhed uncontrollably. When the second bout of shocks had finished and John lay gasping, clenching his hands into fists, struggling for breath, George leaned over to Emily and whispered something in her ear. She looked at John and smiled, then marched quickly out of the ward.

"You're strong," George said to John honestly. He'd expected that a TechCom solider – even one so young – wouldn't crack straight away. But he'd thought that the kid would at least have given his name by now. Why he wouldn't even divulge that, he had no idea. He figured the kid assumed if he told them one thing it would spiral and he'd reveal more. Or he was someone important; if so then he wanted to find out even more.

"Too strong for your own good," George said. "The longer you hold out, the worse it'll get. I'll find out who you are eventually: how much of 'who you are' is left by the time I'm finished is up to you." He'd tortured humans before; some had held out for weeks, longer even. Those who'd lasted the longest were mere shadows of themselves by the time he'd extracted the information he'd needed; they'd become wretched empty shells of human beings and killing them had been an act of mercy.

"So, again: name and rank? What do your friends call you?"

"I can't say," John replied. He didn't know how long he'd hold out, or what they'd do to him next, but he had to try until he found a way out. His looked away from George, his eyes roving over the ward, taking in the number of windows, where the doors were. He couldn't see any cameras but that didn't mean they weren't there. He had to assume there were hidden cameras and every move he made would be caught on camera.

Emily returned with a bucket of water and tossed it over John, the icy cold liquid splashed all over him and soaked into the sheets beneath him. Then she placed another two electrodes on the sheets and secured them in place with medical tape.

"Last chance, soldier," George offered. John shook his head and his heart sank. It was everything he could do to not shake with fear at the pain he was about to feel, worse than before. He screwed his eyes shut and braced himself for the pain, but it never came.

He opened his eyes and saw George and Emily standing up. Emily picked up the tray and marched through the ward and out the doors, and George stood at the foot of John's bed. The power cell was still sat on the table, next to George, and he held the remote control in one hand. "Have it your way, I'll see you in the morning." George stared at John, his face unreadable. He followed Emily out of the ward – taking the remote control with him - and left John alone.

He heard the doors at the other end being locked, and then the lights switched off and immersed John in silence and complete pitch blackness, alone with his thoughts, his fears, and the knowledge that it was going to get much, much worse.

Lightning tore through him once again, a hundred times worse than before; the electricity flowed through the water splashed onto him and spread throughout his body. John once again lost total control of his body as every cell blazed alight and threatened to explode. It went on forever; John couldn't move, couldn't think, he existed only as pain as his body wracked in agony.

It subsided as quickly as it began, and John once again struggled to recompose himself. He needed to find a way to endure it, to cope. There was nothing he could do, he realised. It was going to be a very rough night ahead of him. They were going to shock him through the night, he realised, and he couldn't brace himself for it because he'd never know when it was coming.  _Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it,_  he told himself again, repeating the mantra over and over in his head. Try as he might, he just couldn't believe it.


	25. Strike Back

Derek gritted his teeth and ignored the jarring pain as his skull cracked against the metal above him for what felt like the hundredth time, and focused on just pushing forwards and trying not to bang his head on the metal above him again, though he knew his attempt would fail. He crawled his way forwards through the narrow tube, his elbows, knees, hands, shoulders and head all scraped and bashed against the narrow passage as he made his way forward. Before Judgement Day Kyle had kept pet hamsters; he'd saved up his allowance and bought a large cage with a maze of tubes and pipes for them to run through. Crawling on hands and knees through the pipe, Derek had a rough idea of what it was like to have been those hamsters.  _All I need now is a wheel,_  he thought.

Behind him he heard the muffled sounds of the others as they clumsily followed, and Davenport pushed forwards and blazed a trail for the rest of them. Derek could just make out the lieutenant a few metres ahead of him, immersed in almost total pitch blackness and illuminated only through the glow of the flashlight he held between his teeth.

"Stinks like crap down here," Sergeant Burke muttered from behind Derek; one of the four he and Davenport had chosen to take part in the raid on Schriever AFB.

Derek nodded knowingly despite nobody being able to see the gesture in the dark and narrow tunnel. "Makes sense, considering what this pipe used to be."

"Don't remind me," Davenport said up front as he crawled faster. "I've had to crawl through here  _twice_  now." That earned a wry grin from Derek. He'd led his squad to take part in a covert raid and he'd been determined to find a better way in than the one Perry had attempted before. They'd marched north, then headed east – parallel to the base – and doubled back southwest; the opposite direction from which Skynet would expect any attack from Cheyenne Mountain. They'd searched for any cover among the barren terrain that surrounded the base and come up almost empty: there was scant and sporadic cover to conceal them from ground units and absolutely nothing to keep them out of sight of aircraft.

They'd scouted the area – having little intimate knowledge of the features surrounding the base – and managed to come up lucky: They'd found a drainage pipe that ran almost half a mile from the base and into a ditch, which in turn ran off into a nearby river. From the smell of the pipe it had likely flowed from every toilet on the base, as Davenport had testified after he'd crawled through it before to confirm it ran into the base and that there was a viable way in. Derek found himself glad that Skynet at this early point in the war had decided to use existing military bases for its infrastructure: if this were 2027 they'd have had no chance of sneaking in like this.

"Tell you what," Derek said to Davenport. "When we're on board the  _Nimitz_  you can call first shower."

Everyone shut up after Derek's final comment; they didn't know how well sound travelled through the pipe but it seemed to echo all around them. They crawled the rest of the way in silence; the only sounds were heavy, laboured breathing and various body parts catching the steel sides of the pipe. The smell didn't get any better as they neared the base; Derek guessed the water had stopped flowing through the pipes shortly after J-Day. Screw it, he thought. They were soldiers and crawling around in crap and God-only-knows what else was something they should be used to by now.

Finally Davenport paused up front and pointed his flashlight upwards, illuminating a manhole cover above him and pointing up to it. Derek nodded once to him and stopped in his tracks, as did Burke and the others behind him. Davenport pressed his hands against the cover and pushed slowly. The grating of steel on steel echoed throughout the pipe and was far too loud for Derek's liking: it seemed impossible the machines wouldn't hear it. After what seemed like an age the manhole cover was finally clear and Davenport pulled himself up through the hole and onto the surface, emerging into an unlit space between two hangars. He'd checked out other manhole covers but this was their best chance of remaining undetected as they crawled out of the pipe, even if it was further away from the fuel depot than he'd have liked: the depot was on the other side of the runway, beyond a row of four hangars.

He shouldered his AA-12 shotgun and swept his aim across the base, finding no signs of movement. He heard a distant rumble of T-2 tracks but it came from outside the perimeter and knew the giant machine was protecting against threats approaching the base: it had no reason to look  _inside._  Davenport thrust his hand back into the manhole and gave a thumbs-up to Derek, signalling him to come up. Derek emerged and copied Davenport's action: bringing his HK-G36 assault rifle to bear as he covered the opposite direction to the other lieutenant. One by one the others cleared the pipe and took up defensive positions.

"Split into pairs," Derek whispered softly. "Burke and McAllister, Sikes and Carpenter: plant as many charges as you can. Meet back here in ten minutes." The squad split up and the two pairs Derek nominated split and moved towards the other hangars. Derek and Davenport sneaked round the back of the large structures – marching in silence between the rear of the hangar and the perimeter fence – towards the base of the runway. Derek figured that would be where they'd keep the fuel depot: it wouldn't make sense for Skynet's UCAVs to have to taxi very far on the ground in order to refuel – creature of logic that Skynet was.

"Do you hear that?" Davenport whispered behind Derek, who stopped marching and paused, straining his ears to listen out for whatever it was Davenport had heard. He tensed up and his finger squeezed gently on his trigger, taking up first pressure as he pointed the weapon forward. The air was filled with the background noises of an active airbase: engines droned faintly inside the hangars, along with various mechanical sounds of the maintenance drones that tended to Skynet's fleet of unmanned aircraft, and machines rolled or marched on patrols inside and out. It all sounded ordinary to him.

"What is it?" Derek asked, just able to see Davenport's tense expression on his face through the inky darkness.

"Nothing," he said. Derek shook his head, wondering if the lieutenant wasn't a little too on edge.  _"Literally,_  nothing," Davenport said softly. "We should've heard the railgun by now."

Derek had thought about that, too. They'd set out with the intention of blowing up the fuel depot and grounding Skynet's aircraft, but deep down he'd hoped they'd be able to take out the railgun while they were at it. It was too much to hope for, he guessed, that the weapon would be inside the base. Perry had told him it could fire at a target two-hundred miles away, so it could be anywhere.

"Screw the railgun," Derek slapped Davenport on the shoulder and pointed forward. They were here for the depot and that was all that mattered: keep the metal grounded so they could escape. Skynet could do whatever the hell it wanted with Cheyenne Mountain once they were gone.

They jogged behind the mammoth hangars, dashing across the open ground between structures and continually keeping their eyes open for machine patrols. As they passed by the last hangar in the row of four on their side of the runway, Derek realised the fuel depot was nowhere to be seen. Beyond the row of hangars and the base of the runway were several dozen unused buildings – many now lined with satellite antennae - and beyond that were radar domes and dishes spread out through a wide open area.  _Shit:_ now what the hell were they going to do?

"Over there," Davenport pointed down the wall of the hangar they were hidden behind, past the runway and towards the hangars on the other side. Four large delta-shaped aircraft stood still on the taxiing area fifty metres or so to their right-hand side of the hangars opposite them. They were surrounded by maintenance robots of varying shapes and sizes. Derek stared through the sights of his weapon and saw through the green tinted scope that one machine on wheels rolled straight underneath the belly of one of the jets and raised what he guessed to be missiles into their bomb-bays. Other machines – two-handed versions of the T-70s, connected fuel lines from the large cylindrical depot tanks into the aircraft fuselages.

"Looks like another sortie," Davenport said as he looked through a pair of passive night-vision goggles and watched the same scene as Derek. Neither of them needed to guess where they'd be attacking. Skynet often followed up its railgun strikes with bunker-busting missiles, to make the hole in the mountain even bigger.

"Looks like one  _hell_  of a sortie," Derek replied. The four bombers rolled out of the hangar opposite and straight onto the runway. But he counted another  _twelve_  being fuelled up behind those. If the others were all part of the same mission then it was the largest air attack on the mountain since Skynet's initial assault weeks ago. Twelve bombers all at once, plus however many HKs they had: Skynet must know the mountain's almost done, Derek thought.

The first of the four aircraft taxied onto the runway and blasted down the runway, engines roared deafeningly as it tore along the tarmac and took to the sky. The second hurtled after it just seconds later. He counted them off as they took to the air. Derek was glad to see these aircraft all turned in different directions when they were airborne: these weren't going after Cheyenne just yet, but the twelve being fuelled and armed most definitely would be. When the third took off Derek turned to Davenport.

"We've gotta cross the runway," he said, still whispering even though the seventh UCAV's engines drowned out all other noise around them. This was the most dangerous part, Derek knew: the noise from the jet engines could mask approaching machines.

Davenport looked uneasily at Derek. "We won't make it." He pointed towards a pair of T-70s patrolling in front of the opposite hangars, and then towards another machine stood sentinel on top of a three-storey building with large round satellite dishes sporting from the from. Davenport figured that with the pair patrolling on the other side of the runway, there'd be another pair marching along the fronts of their row of hangars, and from past experience he knew the factories inside the structures held a small legion of machines.

In the shadows in the distance Davenport made out more movement; machines patrolling the other half of the base, marching between the communications and radar buildings and equipment. Whether they were security patrols or simply maintenance drones, he had no idea. They seemed to have eyes everywhere and after his last mission here he knew it would be a matter of time before some of those eyes fell on them. A pair of plodding metallic footsteps from the left-hand side of the hangar they were crouched behind signalled approaching machines. They'd round the corner in seconds and there was no way they could avoid being seen. The only place the machines wouldn't look, he realised, was on the runway itself.

As the Fourth Pegasus started to accelerate down the runway Davenport nodded at Derek in agreement and dashed round the corner, hugging the side of the hangar as he sprinted down its length. Derek cursed quietly and ran after Davenport. The unmanned jet's engines reached a high pitched crescendo as it tore down the runway, and Davenport ran straight towards its path.

Derek caught up with him quickly and saw what he was doing as the pair of them cleared the front of the hangar and carried on going. They dived onto the tarmac and lay flat on the runway as the drone tore past them; jet-wash buffeted them and tore at their clothes and hair as if they were caught in a sudden, violent storm. Davenport shielded his head with his arms felt, the heat from the exhaust wash over him and gave a silent prayer of thanks to whoever designed the things that they didn't build them with afterburners, or they'd have been burnt to a crisp.

* * *

Burke knelt down on the ground and shouldered his assault rifle to cover McAllister as he planted a C4 charge on the rear corner of the hangar. The younger soldier worked hastily to insert a remote detonator into the explosive block.

"How much more C4 do you have?" he whispered.

"Three more blocks," McAllister replied, holding up a second block in his hand.

"Let's plant one inside," Burke said. Detonating C4 inside would do far more damage than the one on the outside corner of the hangar.

"You crazy? Last time we went inside we got our asses handed to us."

"We'll be fine," Burke wedged his knife into the fire escape, between the door and the frame, and worked at the latch. It wasn't designed to keep people out, so it was an easy job and within seconds the door clicked open. Burke wedged the blade back and forth and managed to pull the door back enough to grip it with his fingers, then opened it and stepped through. McAllister followed and slowly pulled the door ajar after him. The interior of the hangar was brightly lit by work-lights hung from the ceiling, and illuminated the cavernous insides. "What the hell?" McAllister stared across the hangar in disbelief. The hangars, having been filled to bursting with machines before, were now empty. Three automated production lines stood still and inert, and the piles of crates they'd seen before were gone. "Where the hell did they all go?"

"Only one place they  _would_  go," Burke said as he felt the impending sense of dread creep up his spine with a frigid chill. Skynet had sent out its machines for the final assault on Cheyenne Mountain. He walked through the empty hangar and looked at the production lines with interest. The production lines had been designed by humans to build machines independently of any assistance: someone would oversee the machines to make sure nothing went wrong, and the automated systems would do the rest. There was even a computer screen that could be accessed if need be. Burke stood before it and pressed icons on the touch-screen, perusing through the files.

"What're you doing, sarge?" McAllister asked, watching the sergeant's back as he worked.

"Trying to find out exactly what we're up against," Burke pressed a series of icons indicating the types of machines produced and how many of each. Eventually he found a file labelled  _'production records'_ and punched that. Even though Skynet would know how many machines it had; the facilities had been initially designed by people, and still held records of production rates, quotas, and anything else manufacturers would have found useful.

"Anything to give us a chance of...  _Jesus Christ!"_  The numbers on the screen boggled his mind: Skynet had produced four hundred ground and air units since the factories had been built on the base, and judging from the emptiness of the hangar Burke guessed the lion's share of them were already en route to Cheyenne Mountain.

"El-tee, we've got a problem," Burke spoke into his radio. "Machines are all gone: en route to the mountain."

_"Got that. Carry on planting C4 and RV at the manhole in five minutes. Radio silence. Out."_

Burke stuck a block of C4 onto the middle of the three assembly lines so when it went up the blast would damage the other two around it enough to halt production. Not that it would matter one bit if the machines wiped out everyone in Cheyenne Mountain.

* * *

Derek and Davenport worked quickly and in complete silence as they planted explosives onto the two massive circular fuel tanks. Derek had heard the bad news, as had Davenport, but they was determined to stay focused on their task. If Skynet had already sent them out then it must mean it had punched through the mountain in the time it had taken them to get to the base. But that didn't change their circumstances one bit: the best way to stop the attack was to keep the bulk of Skynet's aircraft grounded: if they couldn't fly then the operation would be delayed. Skynet wouldn't risk so many units without air support.

"Last one," Davenport nodded as he armed the explosives on the side of his tank and stood up. "Better get clear before we blow it; this place is gonna go up like a volcano."

Derek opened his mouth to reply but stopped as a mechanical plodding approached and a single T-70 emerged from the shadows towards them. It raised its gun arm at Derek and Davenport snapped up his AA-12 and fired a long burst into the machine: the explosive armour piercing shells tore through the drone's chest and head and dropped it to the ground as its minigun roared and spurted out fire into the air as it toppled over backwards.

"Run!" Derek shouted as he got up and sprinted towards the runway. The mission had gone noisy and they'd been discovered. It was time to get the hell out.

Favouring speed over stealth the two soldiers pushed their bodies as hard and fast as they could, adrenaline and fear surged them across the runway at near-Olympian speeds but Derek could already see a pair of T-70s down the runway turning and aiming at them.

An explosion flared in the midst of the two robots and was followed a split second later by a long chatter of assault rifle fire, dropping the machines to the tarmac.

"To me, to me!" burke roared, knelt next to a hangar wall, McAllister a few feet away, laying prone on the ground with an M4 barking as he fired bursts at more machines, who turned their attention to the new intruders shooting at them.

"Covering fire!" Davenport dropped to one knee and loosed another burst of shells whilst Derek sprinted onwards then turned to cover the lieutenant as he in turn ran past. The pair continued firing and manoeuvring whist Burke and McAllister gave covering fire, and quickly made their way to the cover of the hangars to join up with the two soldiers, then ran to the rear of the hangar and dashed towards their RV point.

"You really pissed them off, sir," burke said to Derek as they ran along the backs of the hangars and towards the manhole cover. They could hear rapidly approaching metallic footsteps as the machines chased after them, intent on destroying the human intruders.

The two other men – Sikes and Carpenter – were already at the open manhole cover and gesturing furiously at the others. Davenport dropped into the hole, followed by McAllister and Sikes. Another machine approached and fired a long burst towards them. Derek and Burke dived to the side and avoided being hit, but Carpenter wasn't so lucky. The hail of 7.62mm fire tore him to shreds and ripped his body apart into a bloody mess. Both Derek and Burke fired on the machine; their rounds  _pinged_  off its armour as it pointed the weapon at them, seemingly unaffected by the fire it took. Another burst of fire ripped into Burke and sprayed a fountain of gore onto Derek as he kept shooting, finally scoring a hit on the machine's face and the rounds penetrating through to its CPU. It stood upright for a moment before it fell backwards as if someone had cut its feet out from under it.

Derek didn't even bother to check Carpenter and Burke to see if they were still alive: even if they were they'd never make it back to the mountain and he had a mission to complete. Derek pulled out the remote for the detonators and dropped down into the manhole. He pressed the button and the ground shook around him a split second before several resounding  _booms_ rocked throughout the base. A bright orange-red explosion of fire tore above him. Secondary explosions erupted as the Pegasus bombers being fuelled at the depots ignited and blew apart, devastating a large chunk of the base along with them.

Derek didn't wait to see what happened next; he hurried as fast as he could down the pipe, completely ignorant to the dank smell or the tightness of the cramped tube. He barely even felt the bumps and knocks he took as he crawled as quickly as he could. This mission was now complete, but if this didn't stop the attack then their next mission would be a suicide run to take out as many machines as they could before they reached Cheyenne Mountain. He'd have to trust Ellison and Charley to find John.

* * *

Cameron awkwardly pushed the gas pedal down and the dusty and battered Topkick picked up speed down the long, isolated road. Cameron had driven for two days straight, only stopping to top up the gas tank from the jerrycan she and Courtney had put into the back seat. She'd kept away from the highways and cities and had driven cross country for several hundred miles, battering the 4x4 in the process. The Topkick looked almost in as bad a condition as she herself. Sounds from the engine and forward axle indicated damage had been sustained, and the radiator gauge indicated the engine was in severe risk of overheating. She didn't want to stop the car in case it didn't start again: many resistance fighters had maintained the practice of keeping engines running, as the few remaining vehicles in their motor pools were extremely unreliable.

Cameron was all too aware of her fuel cell slowly depleting, unable to ignore the constantly dwindling number that represented how much power she had remaining. Likewise, she found herself unable to stop analysing the probability of her ever seeing John again, despite the fact every time she did the number decreased slightly. And despite Courtney being dead, she was also constantly at the forefront of Cameron's thought processes, along with John. Cameron didn't wish she was still alive: that was impossible and machines didn't waste time wanting what couldn't be. But she still felt a powerful sense of loss now Courtney was gone. She missed her. She'd never had a friend before, and likely never would again. She had identified with Courtney, because she'd been similar in various ways to herself and to John. Cameron knew John would have liked Courtney.

Cameron continued along the small road, scanning the surrounding area for any threats or signs of movement. There were none: she was the only visible being around for miles. Something  _did_ catch her attention, though: a road sign in the distance. Cameron could see it from much further than a human could, and managed to read it when the sign was still half a mile in front of her.  _Colorado Springs 58 Mi._ She estimated an hour and a half until she reached the outskirts of the city. Two hours before she arrived at Cheyenne Mountain and she could affect repairs and mobilize the entire company – every single soldier and armoured fighting vehicle inside Cheyenne Mountain: she'd do whatever it took to get John back.

* * *

Perry looked on as a pair of privates finished assembling the command centre's defences. The command centre looked totally different from how the military engineers of the fifties and sixties must have imagined it, Perry thought. Instead of monitoring and running a nuclear war or tracking a Soviet invasion of Western Europe from the safety of a mountain, the command centre was now going to be the front line. Skynet's railgun had finished blasting a crater in through the mountain and the hole ran right through the ceiling of the command centre, wide enough to easily fit twenty men through without them touching each other. Much of the already ruined computer equipment had been completely obliterated by the blast of the final shells; rendering the desks little more than shattered splinters of wood and plastic and turning the floor into possibly the world's largest pothole. Perry thanked his lucky stars that he'd ordered the one working long range radio removed from the command centre: if that had gone then he'd never be able to get in touch with  _Nimitz_  again and the choppers wouldn't come in to get them.

Whilst Derek had gone off to play commando in Schriever, Perry had prepared for the worst. Half the room had been transformed into a sangar, equipped with a .50 cal Browning M2 machine gun on a tripod. The gunner would be joined by a five man fire team armed to the teeth with grenade launchers and machine guns. They were the second line of defence after those out on the mountainside. In the corridors leading out from the command centre were similar defence points, semi-barricaded with whatever they could find to provide cover from fire. If and when they fire team in the command centre had to fall back.

On the outside of the mountain, around the crater that penetrated through, Perry had positioned three more M2s, plus a dozen men in makeshift sangars armed with Stingers, Javelins, 7.62mm machine guns, grenade launchers, and three mortar tubes. They were the first line of defence and would hold the mountainside as long as they could before falling back and fast-roping down the crater and into the command centre. The remaining men were split between internal defence and manning fire positions at the North and South Portals, keeping their exits open in case they got a chance to break out and escape. Every able bodied civilian now carried an M4 and at least two-hundred rounds, but even then the company was spread dangerously thin.

"How many rounds you got for the fifty, private?" Perry asked Private Anders, who'd finished preparing the Browning.

"Four belts linked together, sir," the young soldier replied. Perry nodded his assent at the private. Four-hundred rounds should be enough, he thought. It'd push the machines back and force them to try another way in or the soldiers would have to fall back well before the gun ran out of ammunition. It would  _have_  to do, he thought, because they didn't have any more ammunition left.

The double doors burst open and a corporal turned to face Perry, out of breath; the man had clearly sprinted to the command centre. "Sir, we just heard from Lieutenant Baum's team: they took out the fuel stores; aircraft should be grounded. He's on his way back now.

"Very good, corporal," he nodded. That crazy bastard Baum had done it, he could hardly believe it.  _Maybe we'll actually make it out of this one,_  he thought with a growing sense of hope. But he knew they weren't out of the woods just yet. There was still a chance some of Skynet's aircraft might have enough fuel in their tanks to make a run at the mountain: he had to assume that was the case until they were all aboard helicopters and well away from Colorado.

"Contact the  _Nimitz_ and tell them we're ready for them. Get an ETA so we know when to expect them. And tell Baum he's got twenty-four hours to make it back here." The corporal saluted and left the room, leaving Perry and the soldiers finalising the sangar defences alone. Perry switched on his radio to all channels and pressed the intercom button at the same time. He wanted everyone to hear this. "All units, this is Perry. We're expecting pickup in under twenty-four hours. Keep your eyes peeled until then."

There was no point in standing them all to, Perry knew. They couldn't remain at maximum alertness indefinitely. They just had to keep their eyes open and make sure nobody got sloppy or fell asleep at their posts. This was the most dangerous part: when rescue was imminent soldiers started thinking of home, of safety, and this was the point when they'd let their guard down. Once he got an ETA Perry decided he'd stand the whole mountain to an hour before the choppers were due to land. Now it was just a matter of whether Derek's effort was enough to have postponed the attack. All there was left now was to wait. Perry chewed nervously on his bottom lip. Waiting was always the worst part.

* * *

Bedell sat in his chair in the briefing room with other pilots and a squad of twelve marines, all staring intently at Captain Wallace at the front of the room. Behind Wallace was a projector screen with a map of the western United States displayed. Wallace touched a key on his computer and the image zoomed in on Colorado Springs, centring on Cheyenne Mountain a few miles away.

Bedell had felt completely useless for months. The  _Nimitz_  had barely escaped Alaska in one piece, losing almost all of their fighter complement in the process. The  _George H.W. Bush_  hadn't been so lucky: she'd been lost with all hands, struck by two anti-shipping missiles and had sunk rapidly.  _Nimitz_ and the  _Jimmy Carter_  had escaped south and made it into deeper waters, but not before being forced to fight another massive aerial battle that had seen several waves of Skynet aircraft attacking the carrier within a few hours. The ship's fighter pilots had just barely managed to hold each assault off, but the attack had decimated the carrier's fighter contingent from almost sixty F/A-18D Super Hornets down to just five intact jets.

Since then they'd floated out at sea, the now largely obsolete air staff fishing out in the lifeboats to complement their supplies. They'd been lucky that the  _Nimitz_  had taken on so many supplies and so much hardware.

Over the last two days Bedell had noticed a shift in atmosphere on board the ship. Maintenance crews had worked furiously on several helicopters, attaching external fuel tanks, fitting fuel bladders inside the cargo areas, and gutting the choppers of anything that wasn't completely necessary. Bedell wondered what was going on; nobody seemed to know. Now he was getting his answer.

Wallace spoke to the pilots and marine commander in the room, pointing at the screen. "This mission's been kept a secret because I didn't know until an hour ago whether or not we'd be going ahead with it. You've probably noticed the crews working on a number of choppers the last two days, and here's why: as soon as this briefing's over you'll be flying east over the mainland for a rescue mission. 4th Infantry in Cheyenne Mountain is under siege and they need extraction.

"As you all know, this is Connor's unit, and even though General Connor is declared MIA, we're not gonna leave these guys to the machines."

Bedell started to take notes and paid rapt attention to every word Wallace said. He still didn't believe John Connor was dead, he couldn't be, and this might bring him one step closer to finding him. If Connor was meant to save the world – and from what his uncle had said about how nobody else knew the machines like he did – then they needed him more than Wallace or anyone else could know. Everyone else had dismissed his attachment to Connor as hero worship after what had happened to him at the academy. Not one of them knew what he did, and none knew that if Derek was right, then Connor was their one chance at winning, and he wasn't going to let that go down the drain. Plus, Connor had saved his life against that cyborg and he was determined to even the score.

"Refuel here in Utah," Wallace pointed to a spot indicated by a grid reference, out in the middle of nowhere. Bedell jotted down the numbers as fast as he could. "Utah National Guard have agreed to hold a fuel tanker there for twenty-four hours. Land there and top up your tanks, then proceed on to Cheyenne Mountain. Colonel Perry's men will be waiting and will provide cover while you land. Load up everyone and backtrack along the same route you came in on; refuelling once again in Utah and then head southwest to the Mexican border. Turn west and follow the border out to sea and head home. Any questions?"

"What kind of resistance can we expect?" Sam, Bedell's co-pilot asked.

"California's the worst, so avoid flying near it if you can. Skynet now has almost total air supremacy, so anything airborne that's not you is a threat. Fly low and keep under their radar to avoid detection. The route we've planned avoids any known Skynet installations but they could still have air patrols reaching further out."

"What's our plan if we don't make it?" The marine captain asked.

"That happens then you're on your own," Wallace replied solemnly. He was taking a huge risk already, bringing the ship so close to the coast. If they loitered too long, especially so close to California, it would only be a matter of time until Skynet detected them and sent out bombers. He was going to keep the ship in position for two days before he sailed off for deeper waters. Not that there was anything for them if they did.

Bedell had questions but none he was willing to ask Wallace, especially not in front of the others. He'd be dismissed offhand if he did.

With no further questions Wallace dismissed the pilots and they all headed out to the flight deck and towards their helicopters. The four birds were already on the deck, ready and waiting for them. Bedell and Sam, his co-pilot, sat down and strapped into the cockpit of his Seahawk, as the other pilots and a dozen marines piled into three Chinooks that had been liberated from Fort Richardson in Alaska.

Bedell looked back into the rear of the helicopter and saw that it had well and truly been gutted: the machine gun, the fire-fighting and first aid equipment were gone. Even the seats had been torn out of the back. Any passengers he picked up would have to sit on the bare floor. Two large black rubber fuel bladders ran the length of the cabin.

Bedell felt his heart pumping wildly in his chest as he made his pre-flight checks. This wasn't just any flight; he'd been waiting for this since Connor had told him about the future. They'd been vague about his role in the war, but they'd told him he was important – important enough for Skynet to send a machine to kill him, anyway. Maybe this is it, he thought as he pulled back on the yoke and the Seahawk raised up into the air.

 _"Tango One,"_ the air controller aboard  _Nimitz_  addressed Bedell over the radio.  _"You have the lead. Good luck."_

"Tango One to all aircraft," Bedell spoke to the other pilots as their helicopters raised up and cleared the carrier. "Proceed east on bearing one-zero-one. Speed one-six-five knots, altitude one-two-zero metres." Bedell's Seahawk took the lead as the aircraft arranged themselves into a four-ship arrowhead formation and flew east over the sea and towards the west coast.

* * *

Derek scanned the ground before him from his lookout position and kept a sharp eye out for any signs of movement. Behind him Davenport drank from his canteen and Sikes and McAllister rested against a wall, taking advantage of their brief respite for a few minutes before they'd inevitably have to get up again and start marching. Derek had told Perry they'd blown the fuel tanks but he hadn't mentioned that they were going after the machines, too. Derek had made his mind up in the tunnel that they needed to scout out the machines and see if they were holding position or still advancing. If they didn't stop then they'd take out as many as they could, maybe make some small difference to help the guys still stuck in the mountain.

Derek looked down at his watch; they'd rested for ten minutes now, it was time to go. "We move in one minute," Derek said softly to the others behind him. He heard the rustle of the others getting ready, putting canteens and chocolate wrappers away, and the click of working parts as they picked up their weapons. Davenport knelt next to him, AA-12 pointed outwards.

"Colorado Springs is pretty big," Davenport said. It wasn't the largest city but at the same time it was by no means a tiny hamlet. "Sure we're gonna find them here?"

"Where'd you think they are?" Derek asked.

"North, northwest; if I was a machine army I'd head northwest." Derek couldn't help but smile at remembering Kyle saying something so similar once on patrol.

"Why'd you say that?"

"Stay out of the city; open ground. They can spread out, cover their flanks. City's too dangerous: one platoon could plant an ambush and take out a large chunk of 'em."

"We haven't got a platoon to spare," McAllister said as he stood ready. Sikes was just behind him.

"Skynet doesn't know that," Davenport replied. Derek wasn't sure which Skynet would do: he'd never seen an en masse assault force like the one assembled to take out Cheyenne. In the future Skynet patrols were smaller, in pairs or fours, usually. And they normally took the most direct route if they were going somewhere specific. But Davenport's theory made sense, too.

"Head west," Derek decided. "When we get to the outskirts we'll swing north and flank them." The idea of the four of them trying to flank a Skynet force that numbered in the hundreds was almost hilarious when he thought about it.

Davenport took point and they marched west in silence. Derek had them running through the city after a short while, determined to find the machines before they reached Cheyenne Mountain so he knew whether or not their plan had worked. The only sounds as they ran were their boots on the ground and their heavy, laboured breathing. They were lucky that the part of Colorado Springs they were in was reasonably intact, too far from the nuke that struck Peterson Air Force Base to have suffered any more than minor damage. Their old house wasn't far from the outskirts and Derek briefly wondered if it was still in one piece.

They were running down a road through a residential area when Davenport held his fist up in the air, signalling  _'stop.'_  They all froze in place and crouched down to the ground, clutching their weapons tighter. Derek listened carefully and heard the all too familiar sounds of thudding metallic footsteps ahead. He pointed to a low wall in front of a large detached house and all four of them dived over it and hid behind in the large, empty front yard, lying in damp, cold mud and nervously listening out.

The thudding got closer and Davenport chanced a peek over the wall. A single T-70 marched towards them from an adjoining road, coming into view from behind the cover of a house. The machine raised its gun arm towards him and Davenport dropped back down to the ground and crawled away as machinegun fire roared loudly and bullets chewed through the wall. Seconds later a second minigun joined the fray as another machine closed in on them, both machines sprayed the area with rounds and kept the four soldiers pinned down as they approached for the kill.

"So much for staying in open ground!" McAllister shouted to Davenport as he poked his machine gun over the wall and fired a long burst back, ducking down to avoid an incoming burst of fire before he could see if his rounds hit the mark.

Derek rolled onto his front and pointed at Sikes. "We distract 'em, Davenport and McAllister take them out. On three: one... two... three!" Derek and Sikes jumped up to their feet and fired burst after burst at the machines as they ran to the right-hand side of the wall. Derek dived to the ground and tackled Sikes as rounds hammered the house behind them at chest level.

"Thanks, sir," Sikes puffed gratefully.

Davenport and McAllister popped up from the left and aimed their heavier weapons at the machines, each firing a steady burst at the machines. Frag-12s and 7.62mms hammered away at one of the machine and tore through its armour until they shattered critical systems and the T-70 dropped to the ground. Unfortunately in their haste they'd shot at the same machine, leaving the second one still to contend with. The second machine increased its rate of fire, throwing out multiple short bursts that picked the wall apart. They'd be hit sooner or later, Derek knew. They couldn't stay down. "Same again," Derek shouted to them. "On three..."

Derek trailed off as a loudly growling engine approached rapidly. Someone was  _really_ putting their foot down. The drone's minigun stopped firing and Derek looked over the wall in time to see a large black Topkick plough into the T-70 with an almighty  _crack_. Shards of black and grey metal flew in all directions. Glass shattered, metal cracked and bent under the strain. Support struts and metal limbs buckled from the impact and the car rolled over the machine, large wheels crushing its chest into the ground.

 _"Nice!"_ Davenport grinned like a manic as the 4x4 ran over the tin can. Whoever was driving, he liked their style. Both he and Derek aimed their weapons at the downed machine and fired into it, shattering its metal skull to finish it off as the Topkick slowed to a stop. Derek looked into the cab and couldn't believe his eyes.

 _"Cameron?"_  The machine sat behind the wheel, staring at them with the same blank expression she always had. "Inside, now," Derek pointed at the car and jogged across the front. The car's hood was a buckled, shattered mess. The lights were gone and the whole thing looked like it had been ploughed into a wall. He opened the door and saw Cameron's pack on the front seat, her foot sticking out the top. "What the hell... where's John?" he asked, seeing his nephew was nowhere to be seen.

"Century Work Camp," Cameron replied, her face remained the same but Derek saw something in her eyes he could only describe as sadness. He hated that she felt something, wanted her to just be another unfeeling tin can, though deep down, after all that had happened since Judgement Day, he suspected what John already firmly and vehemently believed, that there was more to her. He was beginning to believe it, but he still wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not.

"Century... how?"

"We should switch seats," Cameron said, gesturing at her dismembered leg in the pack and raising what was still attached to her body. Derek said nothing but nodded as Cameron lifted herself out of the drivers' seat and moved over the handbrake to the passenger side. Derek got into the driving seat and started the engine. Davenport took the back seat and McAllister sat in the pickup box at the back and placed his M240 over the top of the cabin, whilst Sikes faced the rear with his rifle. Derek pulled away and drove through the outskirts of the city, heading west towards Cheyenne Mountain.

Cameron told Derek and Davenport everything that had happened since they'd returned to the mountain: John's failed ambush on Cromartie, how the T-888 had nearly killed them both, the HK attack that damaged her and how she rebooted to find John missing. She told them how Las Vegas Airport had been destroyed and that Colonel Ryan had betrayed them to Cromartie – Derek was shocked, to say the least, when Cameron said she hadn't killed him. She told Derek everything, only leaving out her friendship with Courtney: Derek didn't need to know.

Derek and Davenport listened intently as Cameron relayed what had happened to her over the past six months, neither saying a word.

"Why come back?" Derek asked, venom in his voice as he spoke. "You're supposed to protect John."

"Lay off," Davenport shot back. Cameron met his eyes through the rear view mirror and offered a tiny smile. Courtney was the only person she'd ever classified as a friend, but Davenport was definitely an ally. "How's she meant to help John with only one leg and... how much power left?"

"Point two-two-eight percent," Cameron reminded him.

"Meaning...?"

"Eleven days."

"I get it," Derek said, seeing he was losing this one. He knew, intellectually, she wasn't in any state to help John, but this was the closest link he'd had since John had gone missing and he was just frustrated. "So why come back?"

"I need repairs," Cameron said. "We kept spare parts in our wardrobe."

"Better than shoes, I guess," Davenport quipped.

"I only own three pairs of shoes. There's room for spare parts." Cameron only kept a pair of ballet pumps, her combat boots she was wearing now, and a spare pair in hers and John's wardrobe.

 _"Damn,_ Connor's lucky!"

"What?" Derek snorted at Davenport, incredulous at where this had gone.

"Any girl who only has three pairs of shoes is a winner in my book." Davenport decided to be serious for a moment and asked: "Connor's in this work camp in Century: so what're we gonna do about it?"

"We get him back," Derek and Cameron both answered at the same time. Derek decided he should explain what had happened here to Cameron. He told her about the failed assault on Schriever, about George – the Infiltrator- about the railgun that had torn through the mountainside, and how they were awaiting helicopters from the  _Nimitz_  to pick them up.

" _Nimitz_  will have a hundred or so marines," Davenport said. "Should be enough to take the camp and rescue Connor."

"That's the plan," Derek said as he pulled out into the countryside and headed towards the mountain, only a few miles away now. Once they were aboard the carrier Derek would convince the guy in charge, one way or another, to lend him marines to help with the rescue. "Perry doesn't know it yet, but that's the plan."


	26. One Hundred Percent Again

John closed his eyes and gave out a low moan of pain as the electric shock subsided. His body still twitched as the last ebbs of current dissipated in his body and left him quivering as if on the tail end of a seizure. He hurt, badly; his body was a wreck and he didn't know how much longer he could keep going without telling them something. They'd tortured him for days, now: he'd endured endless interrogation; electric shocks, beatings, and there'd been drugs, too. They'd injected him with something that clouded his mind, made him confused and disoriented, and made him feel the pain even more acutely. John had struggled against the pain during the day, battling to keep his wits about him and fighting to hold on as long as he could to not give George or Emily anything.

As excruciating as the interrogation was, the nights were worse. When the questions stopped they once again hooked him up to the T-2 battery and left him alone in the dark, shocking him at random. They'd blindfolded him and played unending white noise to accompany the electricity, completing the torturous mix of pain, sleep and sensory deprivation that was slowly turning him into a wreck.

George was conducting his interrogation, as he had done for the most part. John was sure the Grey enjoyed torturing him. George stood over him, holding the remote control for the power cell. "How long's it been since you ate; three days, now? Tell me your name and I'll see about getting you something to eat." John shook his head slowly and he tensed up in anticipation of what was to come as George's thumb pressed down on the button.

It didn't help: fire tore through his whole body as George activated all the electrodes and John lost control of himself once again. He cried out in white hot agony as the current surged violently through him, never ending, burning him from the inside out and ripping his nerves to shreds. Barely able to think, John felt like it was going on forever. Some deep, distant part of his brain managed to retain some conscious thought and knew that George was shocking him for a lot longer than normal. Tears welled in his eyes and he started to foam at the mouth as he convulsed and rocked on the bed. The pain was unimaginable, unendurable, and his body screamed  _'no more'_ as John felt the world drift away and darken as he faded away into oblivion; his last thoughts before he blacked out were of Cameron.

* * *

_"John, you need to finish packing." Cameron stood in the doorway, looking at the mess of his room. They'd been packing their belongings for several days in order to move. They'd shown Derek the same news broadcast they'd seen on TV, and all three of them had agreed there was nothing more they could do to try and prevent Judgement Day: all that was left was to survive it and fight back afterwards. John had researched bunkers and fallout shelters online and found Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado: designed in the fifties to fight a nuclear war and track incoming Russian missiles, and built underneath a mountain, it was the perfect place to survive it. Derek had already arranged a lease on a house in Colorado Springs - only a short drive from the mountain base – and they were almost ready to make the long drive from LA._

_John was glad they were leaving: Los Angeles held nothing for him and he hated LA, if he was honest with himself. Almost everything bad to ever happen to him had been in this city and he'd be happy never to see it again. On the flip side of that, his mom was buried in a cemetery on the outskirts, and he'd never get to see her again. He'd never even been able to say goodbye or show how much he really appreciated everything she'd done for him. He regretted being such a little bastard for so long after his sixteenth birthday. He'd been a dick to all of them but at least he could still make it up to Cameron and Derek: he'd never have that chance with his mom._

_John looked up at Cameron and nodded. "Yeah, but not now."_

_"We're leaving tomorrow," Cameron replied. "There isn't much time."_

_"I have to do something first," John said to her. He grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the seat at his desk and pulled it on. He stepped past Cameron and made his way down the stairs. "Don't follow me, okay. I'll be back."_

_"I don't understand," Cameron looked down at him from the banister at the top of the stairs. She didn't know what John was doing or why: his emotions were less volatile now but there were times when she still didn't understand his thought processes. He did things she couldn't make sense of, and this was one of those times. He knew how dangerous LA was, with Cromartie still searching for them._

_"You don't need to," John stepped out the front door and pulled it shut behind him. He made his way down the drive and into the Ram. He slotted the key into the ignition and brought the car to life, then pulled out of the drive and onto the main road._

_The LA traffic was light compared to normal, and it didn't take long before John saw signs for the cemetery up ahead. He followed them until he saw the rolling green fields that held so many graves and markers; hundreds upon hundreds of people dead and buried. It made him think about all those who'd go unburied in a few months' time: all the bleached white skulls and bones that would litter the earth, with nobody to put them to rest._

_John stood in front of the simple stone marker, still as a statue as he stared down at it and read the inscription over and over._ Sarah Reese 2010. _This was the first time he'd come to her grave since he'd railed against Cameron, and now they were going to leave LA behind he just had to come here one last time. He'd stood there for hours, not saying a word or moving an inch, just thinking, remembering his mom. He'd come here to say goodbye but he couldn't bring himself to leave, knowing he'd never be able to come back again; the grave, her marker, was all he had left of her now._

_"Everyone dies for me," he muttered as he knelt down in front of the marker and ran his fingers over the engraved inscription. He never thought his mom would be one of them. She was stronger than anyone he'd ever known; Derek had been right when he'd called her 'harder than nuclear nails'. She'd done more than anyone should have ever asked of her, and he found himself cursing his future self for putting so much of this on his mom._

_"I never thanked you once," John voiced his guilt and shame. She'd protected him since before he was even born; he'd always complained that he couldn't live like a normal person, but then she'd given up her whole future, everything in her life, from the moment he'd sent Kyle Reese back, and she'd never once chickened out, never ran off to be normal, and had never shirked her burden for a single moment. He felt deeply ashamed of himself for how he'd acted and what he'd put her through. "I'm sorry."_

_"I wasn't worth it," John shook his head and felt the tears streaming from his eyes and running down his face as he silently sobbed over Sarah's grave, all the loss and emotion he'd bottled up for weeks flowing as freely as the tears he wept. Everyone he cared about died for him, but why did_ she _have to go? Why his mom? He'd built a wall up around it but now it came crashing down as it hit home that she was truly gone. "I wasn't worth dying for."_

 _"You are," Cameron stepped up and stood behind him, mere inches from his back. John stood up turned round to look at her, eyes wide in surprise that she was here. He hadn't heard her approach._ Stupid! _He chided himself; if she were Cromartie he'd be dead, and his mom's death would have been for nothing. It'd be ironic, he mused, if he were to get shot here; at least they wouldn't have to take him anywhere afterwards._

_"How long were you there?" John asked, sniffing and wiping the tears away from his eyes as he got up to his feet._

_"Three minutes," Cameron stared at him as John's eyes met hers._

_"Why didn't you say anything?"_

_"You were grieving," Cameron answered simply. She'd seen that people often wanted to be alone when they mourned loved ones._

_"You came to keep an eye on me?" John looked away from her, to his right._

_"That's one reason," Cameron said cryptically. John couldn't help but feel that was a loaded statement, curiosity got the better of him._

_"What's the other?"_

_"You shouldn't be alone."_

_"I know... it's a security risk," John sighed sadly, getting back up to his feet._

_"No. You shouldn't grieve alone."_

_"I should get used to it," John replied. "Everyone dies for me, right? So I'm gonna end up lonely anyway."_

_"You don't have to be lonely," Cameron said, stepping forward so she was next to John._

_"She's gone," John couldn't help himself, it was all too much for him; he sobbed and cried again and leaned into Cameron, holding on to her, his fingers clutching into her jacket. Cameron wrapped her arms around John's back and pulled him close to her as he buried his face into her shoulder. She felt his body wrack as he sobbed. She wanted him to feel better, wanted to comfort him. She wanted to protect him, even from his own emotions. She felt a sense of frustration that she could do little to relieve his suffering, knowing there would be more in the months and years to come._

_John held closely onto her, glad she'd ignored his order and followed him. He pulled away and looked at her. "Thank you," he lightly pressed his lips to her cheek as they stood there and held each other._

_Cameron smiled as he kissed her cheek and she didn't move away from John. At the same time she made no attempt to do anything else: she'd attempted to seduce him before to make him feel better but had no intention of doing so again: it hadn't worked before and had had the opposite effect and pushed John away, making him feel worse. Her previous attempts had convinced John she was just a machine and didn't care. She cared more than she knew she should, even for his protector; more than the parameters of her programming dictated necessary._

_"We have to go, don't we?" John said sadly, wiping his eyes. Cameron nodded in reply but waited for John to move. John looked back one last time at his mother's grave, knowing he could never return. He still didn't think he was worth it, and didn't think he ever would be, but he'd do what he could to try and make her proud._

_He pulled away and stood at her side, stretched out his fingers and laced them with hers as he turned to her and smiled. He gently squeezed her fingers and leaned into her slightly. John and Cameron left the cemetery with their fingers entwined together; they remained hand in hand all the way home._

* * *

"C... Cameron," John muttered as he came to and opened his eyes. He remembered where he was and cursed himself for saying her name in front of George.  _Shit._ They were both from the future; what if he knew about her? He had to, right?

"Cameron..." George's eyes lit up and he smiled, revealing too-perfect, gleaming white teeth.  _Now we're getting somewhere,_  George thought. He'd given up one thing; the rest would come easier now. "Well, Cameron; what's your last name?"

John stared at George in confusion before he realised: George thought he was confessing his name. That meant he must have never heard of Cameron, or at least didn't know her by name. He'd already slipped up once but uttering her name, but now he had to keep his wits about him. "Baum," he croaked. He decided to keep it simple; keep the name as something he knew so he wouldn't slip up again.

"I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Cameron Baum," George said. "I'd shake your hand but then I'd have to undo your cuffs."

John opened his mouth to speak but stopped as his dry, parched lips cracked and a droplet of warm blood ran into his mouth. "Thirsty?" George asked. John simply nodded in reply. His throat felt like a desert, his head pounded and he couldn't even feel any saliva in his mouth, he was that dry. He'd not had anything to drink in two days; George had removed the drip to let him get weaker and weaker.

George stepped back and pulled a glass jug from the tray behind him. He poured into a clear plastic glass and moved towards John, tilting it up to his lips. John hesitated for a moment, worried about what was actually in the glass. "It's only water," he pulled the glass back and sipped, making a show of drinking it for John's benefit. John accepted it when George offered the glass again, drinking greedily and gulping it down, desperate to take all of it. Some dribbled down his cracked lips and dripped onto his jacket, but he managed to drink the majority of it. When the glass was empty George filled it up again and repeated the action. John downed the second helping in moments, wasting none of it.

"See; tell me the truth and you're rewarded." George crossed his arms and stared down at John. "Who did you come back with, Cameron? Where's your team?"

"No team," John said, speaking a little more comfortably now he'd gotten some water down his parched throat.

"Maybe you didn't understand me. The truth is rewarded: lie to me and things will get much, much worse for you, Cameron." George picked up his radio and spoke into it. "Daniel, put the kettle on, will you?"

"Coffee?" John asked sarcastically; anything to keep George talking, to give himself some reprieve from whatever was coming, chance to prepare for the worst.

"Not quite," George smiled as Daniel entered carrying a tray with an electric kettle, a bottle of bleach a bag of sugar. Daniel stood and watched as George poured the bleach into the kettle and switched it on, then sat down in a seat next to John's bed and waited for it to come to the boil.

"Cameron, I know you're still doing your duty for the resistance, and you realise that I have to do mine, for our Lord Skynet."

 _Lord Skynet?_  John had no clue what he was talking about; he'd always assumed the Greys sided with Skynet to save themselves, but did they actually  _worship_  it? George was insane, he decided. "You think Skynet's a god?" he asked.

"We  _know_  Skynet's a god," George stared down at him. He didn't expect the kid to understand. How could he? Skynet, the terminators, even they – the lowly infiltrators, servants of the machines – were simply superior to man. Skynet made him so much more; stronger, faster, smarter than he ever could have been as a natural born human being.

Faint rumbling behind him and the  _click_  of a switch stopped George from saying anything further: the kettle had boiled. He went back to it and poured the boiling bleach into the same plastic cup he'd given John water from and placed half a dozen tablespoons of sugar into it, then stirred it vigorously to mix it together. "Last chance, Cameron; where is your team?"

"They're dead," John replied, deciding to use Derek's former team as a template for his lie, hoping faintly George would believe him. That hope disappeared in a flash as George picked the glass off the tray and approached John. His heart raced like a horse inside his chest in horrible anticipation and he tried to pull away in vain. "I'm telling you the truth!" John shouted out. "We were attacked: they were killed and I was captured! I..."

John screamed out in terror and agony as George thrust the glass forward, hurling the boiling bleach into his face. It instantly burned on contact and steam rose from the scorched flesh as the skin turned red raw and blistered almost instantly. John screwed his eyes closed and let out a bloodcurdling scream, unable to think, to feel anything but the searing, boiling, overwhelming pain. He tried to bring his hands to his face but they were chained to the bed. He had no way to protect himself from another attack, no choice but to accept it as the bleach burned his skin and the flesh underneath.

"In prisons they call it 'napalming'", George said as he poured more boiling bleach into the glass and mixed it with sugar again. "Inmates normally used it against sex offenders or members of rival gangs; I hear it's  _very_  painful."

John managed to fight through the slowly fading pain and regain his senses as he fought for air, breathed heavily to focus on something other than his face burning. George's statement instantly made him think of Charles Fischer; the Grey Derek shot. He'd told him about it; how Fischer was in prison come Judgement Day, and wondered if it was him who'd taught George and his group of psychotics how to torture people.

John watched in horror as George came closer with another glass of homemade napalm; his heart once again pounded with fear and John couldn't control his breathing, rapidly inhaling and exhaling, hyperventilating as the terror of the white hot agony to come. John saw George thrust his hand forwards once more, closed his eyes, and screamed.

* * *

Cameron sat on the edge of her and John's bed, one leg dangling off the end of the large double spread and the other jutted out, the exposed wires and metal that ended just below the knee. A box of spare parts sat on the bed next to her. Derek and Davenport stood in front of her. For over six months she'd wanted nothing more than to bring John back to the safety of the mountain and into their quarters. She wanted him safe, wanted him alone with her so they could spend time together.

When they'd arrived at Cheyenne Mountain she'd seen the frantic activity of soldiers preparing for a losing battle. 'Making a last stand,' Derek had called it. They'd managed to sneak through the lines of machines on foot, carrying Cameron between them whilst McAllister and Sikes had covered their approach. They'd taken her straight up to her and John's quarters while the other two soldiers had reported to Perry.

Cameron unbuckled her belt and peeled her combat trousers down off her legs and let them drop to the ground, then unselfconsciously unbuttoned her DPM jacket and pulled off her T-shirt, leaving her in just bra and underwear. Davenport averted his gaze as Cameron unhooked her bra and discarded it on the bed, exposing herself unashamedly. Davenport had once seen her practically naked like this before; the day he discovered she was a machine. He'd gotten over the machine part but her nakedness made him nervous, more so because she didn't seem to care.

"They're just tits, Davenport," Derek said. "Not even real ones."

Cameron ignored Derek's comment and didn't bother to inform him every part of her organic components were lab-grown, cloned flesh and as real as any woman's except she couldn't produce milk. She flicked open a switchblade and ran it down her chest, slicing through her flesh between her breasts and down to the top of her stomach. "Come here," she said to Davenport. The lieutenant approached slowly and sat down on the bed, as far away from her as he could.

Cameron unlocked the armoured breastplate that covered and protected her power cell, then picked up a small square device from the box and a pair of thick blue plastic-insulated wires. "Remove my power cell and primary power conduit, and replace them with these."

Davenport stared at the large cut she'd made between her breasts, exposing her shattered breastplate and the power cell and moving parts beneath. "I don't think I'm right for this." In truth, Davenport felt he was the worst person for the job: he could see why she'd prefer him over Derek, what with their past history and all; but he didn't think he was the one for the job; he couldn't even change a fuse.

"I can't replace my own power cell," Cameron said, raising one eyebrow quizzically at him. She'd assessed Lieutenant Davenport during the time he'd served with them and determined he was very intelligent, behind his attempts at humour: She thought it was possible her previous assessment was inaccurate.

"If she pulls out her own power cell she's inert," Derek explained as he leaned against the wall. "Here," he stepped forward and quickly stuck his hand into Cameron's chest, ignoring the wet warmth of her flesh and blood on his wrist.

"Under the breastplate," Cameron instructed him patiently. Derek adjusted his hand and reached under the jagged remains of the inch-and-a-half-thick hyperalloy armour, and felt a hot square object snugly fitted into a thin metal cradle. He'd seen terminator power cells before but they'd always been cold; something was wrong.

"Should it be hot like that?" Derek asked. It felt like he was gripping a mug of just-boiled coffee; it was uncomfortably hot, but not enough to burn his hand.

"No, it's leaking," Cameron replied.

" _Leaking?"_  Derek pulled back slightly, as did Davenport, both turned pale at the thought of  _what_ a nuclear power cell would be leaking.

"Like, radiation?" Davenport asked

"Leaking  _power,"_  Cameron corrected him. She'd noticed that humans were paranoid about all aspects of machines, including their power cells. Future-John had told her it was in part because of the radiation poisoning so many suffered after Judgement Day, which enhanced their fear. They'd seen the slow, painful deaths suffered by friends and family and she understood why they were afraid of it happening to them. "I increased power output to keep functioning; it generates a lot of heat." Her power cell was insulated so there was no danger of Derek burning his hand on it.

"Think I've got it," Derek wrapped his fingers around the cell to get a better grip. "Do I just yank it out, or unscrew it, or...  _Shit!"_  lightning tore its way up Derek's arm and he pulled his hand back out of her chest, clutching his hand in pain as he sucked on one of his fingers to sooth it.

"Careful, the conduit's exposed," Cameron said. Current flowed from the wires to and through the protective panel that housed it, making it electrified.

"Yeah, thanks," Derek rolled his eyes at her. He could swear he saw a slight grin of smugness on her face; it was so hard to tell with a machine that could hold any expression it wanted to. He reached back in and started again. "Do you know anything about infiltrators?" Derek asked her. Even once they'd left the mountain, George was still out there somewhere. He was dangerous; even more so than metal. He'd do a lot of damage to the resistance if they gave him a chance and after escaping from Colorado and getting John back he decided finding and killing George and any others like him should be their top priority.

"No," Cameron answered honestly. There was nothing in her files about human infiltrators. "I don't have any information about them." She didn't even know they existed; Skynet must have omitted anything regarding infiltrators from machines' files, to keep them secret. The resistance couldn't learn anything about them if there was no information on the chips to be read. That's what she'd do if she wanted to keep them a secret.

"The cell is in a cradle," Cameron changed the subject back to her repairs. The infiltrator wasn't important anymore; he was gone. Her only concern now was to get John back, and she needed to be one-hundred-percent to accomplish that. "The primary power conduit's contact is housed in an armoured chamber under the cradle. You have to pry it open." Derek took out his knife, eased it into the hole in her chest and wedged the blade under the panel and wriggled it until he managed to pry it ajar and pull it open like she'd instructed.

He pulled the knife blade out and peered as best he could through the incision in her chest and the hole in her breastplate. Inside the panel was a single thick cable protected by black plastic casing. "The cable pulls out at both ends of the chamber," Cameron told him. "Pull out the power cell, then disconnect the cable and replace them both." Derek gripped the cable between his thumb and forefinger to confirm it.

Derek pulled it out and Cameron felt the cell's contact being removed from the cradle. She felt and saw nothing as her systems and cognitive functions all ceased. Cameron's world became black and silent.

Derek tossed the cell aside and laid Cameron's inert body on her back and leaned over her. "He gestured for Davenport to come closer. "I can't feel my way through this," he said. "Hold her chest wound open so I can see what I'm doing."

Davenport hesitated but did as Derek said; he stuck his fingers into the hole in her flesh and pulled it apart, amazed at how real it felt. He peeled it enough for Derek to just about see inside through the small gap she'd opened up by unlocking her breastplate; not that she'd needed to with the large jagged hole through the burnt metal.

"No wonder she's in bad shape," Davenport said as he saw the wire: she'd told them on the way back to the mountain that the primary conduit was like a human aorta in function, and this one was definitely screwed. The wire was almost fully torn through, connected by only a few slender threads. How the hell she'd gone on like that, he didn't know. He wondered if it hurt or not; Derek had gotten an electric shock from touching it for a split second; she must have felt that constantly sparking away inside her for months. Machine or not, that must have been hell.

Derek pulled out the cable and tossed it aside, then picked up new power cell and stared at it in wonder. For years he'd wished he could rip out her power cell and kill her. Now she was all but and her 'heart' was in his hands.

"I hated her for years," Derek said as he held the fuel cell up to Davenport. "Once she went bad and tried to kill John; we stopped her, pulled her chip out, and she was offline, like she is now. We wanted to burn her, melt her down to nothing, but John stopped us. I was pissed at the time and swore if I had her offline again I'd finish her off."

Davenport stared at him in horror like he'd grown a second head. After all they'd been through now, how could he even think it? "Derek-"

"Don't worry, I'm not going to," Derek said, tossing the depleted cell aside. He couldn't kill her; he didn't even want to anymore. Never in his life did he expect to have patched up a machine – especially Cameron. But after all that had happened to her since Las Vegas; what she'd done to try and rescue John, he couldn't help but feel a grudging respect.

"I hate not hating you anymore," he mumbled under his breath, glad Davenport hadn't heard him and Cameron was in no position to; literally dead to the world.

He slotted the fresh power cell into its cradle and reconnected the intact new conduit to the sockets in the armoured box lower in her chest, closed it up, then pulled his hand out for what he hoped would be the last time.

"Now what?" Davenport asked.

"Fifteen seconds before she wakes up." Derek replied.

Awareness returned to Cameron as her reboot cycle completed. Damage reports filled her consciousness, but she was already aware of them. The one improvement she noted was her power cell; her diagnostic systems showed her new power cell functioning at eighty-two percent and expending energy at a rate of one-point-two percent a year; enough power to last ninety-eight-point-four years. She was now able to run her cell at a normal rate and not risk overheating.

She was also surprised slightly that she had rebooted at all; she'd suspected Derek would attempt to destroy her while she was vulnerable, which was why she'd asked Davenport to replace her cell. They'd called a truce in Las Vegas, for John's benefit, but she'd calculated a forty percent chance Derek would kill her. She'd had no choice and had to trust Derek. Her trust had been vindicated. Now her power cell was replaced she had to concentrate on her other repairs; her breastplate and right dorsal plate were severely damaged; she hadn't taken any armour from the T-888s and they wouldn't match her smaller frame, but she  _had_  kept the melted lump of hyperalloy from the terminators they'd beaten on Judgement Day.

"Thank you," Cameron said to Derek and offered a small smile.

"Not like we're engaged or anything," Derek grunted.

"What's next?" Davenport asked. He felt useless at the moment, embarrassed for shying away minutes ago, and wanted to help Cameron.

"There's hyperalloy and metalworking tools in the storeroom where I worked," Cameron said. "I need you to carry me there."

* * *

"Jesus Christ!" Bedell swore as he led the helicopter formation towards Cheyenne Mountain and saw the large gaping hole in the rock face. The hole had been prominent even from several miles away; up close it was terrifying to think what could have torn through a mountain complex designed to withstand a nuclear strike. It made him think now more than ever how screwed they were against Skynet; that even the mighty US military had been brushed aside by Skynet like a man swatting away a fly. That was why they needed someone like Connor; normal soldiers didn't understand the machines: they saw them as the enemy and nothing more. Derek had told him a long time ago that only John Connor truly understood how Skynet thought.

"Half the damn mountain's blown away," Sam said beside him as they closed in on the mountain and descended down to the parking lot outside. They were close enough to just about see the soldiers stood to on the mountainside as they waved to them in greeting. Bedell couldn't see their faces at this distance but he could imagine the beaming smiles on their faces as they arrived.

"This is  _Nimitz_ flight lead Tango One to Cheyenne Mountain; we're outside and requesting permission to land." Not that Bedell felt he needed permission, given the circumstances he doubted anyone would object to them landing.

_"Colonel Perry to Tango One: roger that, you are cleared to land. Not a moment too soon, either."_

Bedell slowly lowered the Seahawk down to the ground as the Chinooks did the same around him. They kissed the tarmac of the parking lot with a gentle thud and the squad of marines fanned out as soon as the larger transport helicopters opened their rear ramps; rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers at the ready. They took defensive positions behind the tank traps made from the shells of T-2s, and in between the armed Humvees and the Stryker that kept watch. He switched off the engine and stepped out of the cockpit as the blades above him slowed down.

A tall black soldier in DPM fatigues rolled out to meet him, assault rifle slung over his back. Bedell couldn't help notice the strain on his face and the intense look in his eyes of a soldier who'd been in the shit for far too long. He looked like his face would crack from the pressure and he was standing on a knife edge. "I'm Colonel Perry," he stuck his hand out and Bedell took it, offering a firm shake. The man's grip was tight, just like the coil sprung inside him, he guessed.

"Lieutenant Bedell," he introduced himself. "Heard you need a lift, sir."

"Could say that," Perry motioned Bedell to follow him into the tunnel entrance to Cheyenne Mountain, past the open blast doors and into the base interior. "We're days, maybe hours away from being overrun. If you'd been a day late we might not have been here anymore. One of my lieutenants reported that up to four hundred machines are on their way; we've stalled them for now."

"How long until you're ready to leave?" Bedell asked.

"Couple hours," Perry said. They had to get the soldiers on the mountainside down and transfer their weapons and what equipment they could carry onto the helicopters. The soldiers out on top with the heavier weapons would be the last to leave their posts, just in case Skynet chose to attack as they were leaving. "Might as well get some chow and rest for a while. Mess hall's at the end of the main corridor; it's only tinned food and MREs, but it's all we've got."

Bedell nodded his assent to Perry and left towards it. It had been a long flight and he'd not eaten all day or even had a chance to pee in hours. Something to eat and a couple hours rest while everyone got ready sounded good to him.

* * *

"You all put back together now?" Davenport asked Cameron as she lifted herself off the workbench and stood upright. She ran another diagnostic check and found she was a hundred percent again.

"Yes," she answered. "Thank you for your help."

"Anytime," Davenport smiled.

Perry had asked Derek to supervise the soldiers loading up the helicopters; something she could tell he was happy to do: she was aware of how uncomfortable he was with repairing her. With Davenport's help she'd removed her breast and dorsal plates, then cut sections of the hyperalloy lump and melted it down, using it to fully repair the damage caused by the HK missile attack that had separated her and John.

Once the repaired armour plates had been reattached and locked into position she and Davenport had worked on her leg. She'd had to replace servos and pistons with those from T-888s; Skynet had designed many of her moving parts to be interchangeable with those of the T-Triple-Eights, and she'd not had a problem with most of them. The flesh on her severed leg had started to degrade over the almost three days it had taken her to reach Cheyenne Mountain but it would regenerate. Davenport had given her a tin of corned beef to eat whilst he'd helped reattach her leg, so that the protein could help speed healing. She was glad Davenport was eager to help: Derek would have repaired her but there would have been little conversation and he wouldn't have thought to find her something to eat.

Davenport looked at her body as she stood up straight, cringing a little from the sight of her. Her chest was a bloody mess of black sutures that held the two sides of the wound together. She'd cut a Y-Incision into her chest to remove the breastplate and now looked like the subject of an autopsy. Her back and right shoulder were just as unsightly, and her right leg was a mess of bloodied bandages wrapped round her knee. Cameron had declined dressings for her shoulder and back; she didn't need them and they'd be more useful to the human soldiers who might be wounded in the future.

"Shit!" Davenport cursed as Cameron walked up to the door. He'd forgotten to take her clothes with them when they'd carried her to the store room; she stood in only a pair of white cotton panties, her modesty completely exposed to the world. "Wait here, I'll get you some clothes."

"Doesn't matter," Cameron replied as she opened the door to leave. She'd get them herself. "They're only tits," she parroted Derek's earlier remark. She didn't feel self conscious at all; she only wore clothes to blend in. She stepped outside and marched down the corridor towards the living quarters. She made her way through the complex, past several soldiers moving equipment around; they all stared at her open-mouthed in utter shock as she walked by all but naked, not caring in the least.

"Damn!"

"Jesus. H. Christ!"

"Think those are real?"

She ignored the remarks they made as she continued on her way towards her quarters. She rounded the corner and came face to face with Perry. The large black officer cried out in shock at the sight of her and stepped backwards. "Why the hell are you naked?" he snapped. He'd been told she'd arrived with the survivors of Derek's team and wasn't pleased about it. He trusted her as far as he could throw her.

"I had to repair myself," she replied.

Perry rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Stay out of our way; the helicopters are leaving in an hour.  _You're_  staying here." No way was he having her on board the aircraft carrier; he'd never be able to explain what she was without getting him and his men thrown overboard. Connor trusted her but  _he_  didn't.

"I have to find John," Cameron insisted, she wasn't going to let Perry stop her; she wouldn't let anyone stop her from rescuing John.

"Connor's dead," Perry snapped. He didn't give a shit what she'd told Derek and the others; as far as he was concerned every word out of her mouth could well be a lie. She'd been gone for months now and could have fallen under Skynet's control; there was no way he was going to gamble his men's lives on her word. Hell, for all he knew she'd killed Connor herself and was trying to lead them into a trap.

Cameron's fists clenched and twitched in anger; if he was going to try and stop her then he was a threat to John. "John's alive," she said, her voice somehow neutral and yet full of menace at the same time in a way that made Perry nervous.

Cameron advanced towards him and Perry's hand moved to the handle of the M4 carbine slung at his hip, ready to shoulder it and empty the magazine into her if she attacked him. Cameron considered forcing him to help; she knew how to inflict pain and could be very persuasive, but she decided against it; harming Perry would turn him further against her. In an instant she formulated a new plan and walked away.

Inside her quarters Cameron quickly got dressed and pulled on her purple leather jacket; she'd left it in the mountain so it wouldn't be damaged in the fighting, and had attempted to blend in more by dressing like the other soldiers. She pulled out a pair of duffel bags and stuffed spare clothes into one bag, and John's extra uniform and boots into another, with some spare pairs of jeans and T-shirts included. She took the Rubik's cube John had given her for her built day and placed it into her bag, as well as the ballet pumps and the notebook he'd given her; the only few items she owned that she had any attachment to.

Those few things packed, Cameron slung her SCAR-H over her back and left the room, knowing she'd never return to it again. She marched through the complex and into the armoury, stepping inside. There was a single occupant inside – a corporal – who was packing M4s into a crate, and a large array of weapons that had yet to be packed and stowed on board the helicopters. She scanned them all in an instant and decided what she needed.

"Someone said you were back; no Connor, huh? You taking weapons out to the choppers, tin can?" The corporal asked with disinterest.

"No," Cameron replied honestly. "I need weapons to rescue John."

"Not gonna happen," he said, turning back to pack another rifle into the box before he closed the lid over the top.

"Where are the pilots?" she asked him. "Lieutenant Baum wants me to tell them to be ready in an hour."

"In the mess eating some chow; they're – hey!" Cameron shoved the corporal into a closet within the armoury and locked the door. She'd tried Courtney's method – asking – but it hadn't worked. Many of the soldiers were still hostile towards her because she was a machine; she knew asking was unlikely to achieve what she wanted, not with them.

"Let me out, tin can!" The corporal banged against the door and unleashed a loud tirade of swearing and screaming at her. "Let me out or I'm gonna blow you apart, you bitch!"

Cameron ignored his further rants and his attempts to break the door down as she inspected the armoury. In addition to her SCAR-H rifle she selected an M240 machine gun, M32 grenade launcher, an M82 Barrett sniper rifle, AA-12, a Javelin, and a Stinger missile launcher. She stuffed boxes of grenades and Frag-12 rounds, and spare missiles for the Javelin and Stinger launchers into a bag, along with several hundred 7.62mm rounds, attached straps to all the weapons and slung the two rocket launchers over her back.

She walked out of the armoury, laden with enough weapons and ammunition to fight a small war on her own. She marched out of the mountain, through the blast doors, telling the soldiers manning the tunnel she was helping move weapons into the helicopters.

She strode out to the smallest helicopter – the Seahawk - and dumped her arsenal into the back. She slammed the side door shut and went back inside, ignoring the soldiers she passed and their comments aimed at her, and went back inside towards the mess hall. There were ten people inside the room, clustered at different tables in pairs and threes as they ate their food out of ration tins. Eight of the ten were dressed in pilots' jumpsuits and had Navy insignia stitched onto their arms and chests.

"Who flew the Seahawk?" she asked them. A young pilot with close cropped brown hair, slender frame, and slightly shorter than John, stood up. She read the nametag on his jumpsuit; it read  _Bedell._  She knew the name; one of those written in blood in the basement of their old house in LA. Future-John had told her all about Martin Bedell, how he'd died rescuing him and many others from a Skynet convoy headed to the work camps.

"There's a problem with it," she said urgently. "It's damaged."

 _"What?"_  Bedell looked at Cameron, incredulous. "What's wrong with it?"

"I don't know; there was smoke coming from the engine." Bedell didn't know who or what she was; he had no reason not to trust her.

Bedell turned back to Sam, sat on the opposite side of the table. "I'll check it out; you stay here," he told him, then ran out of the mess hall and through the corridors of the base with Cameron just behind him. They left the base once again and made it out into the parking lot. Bedell took one look at his helicopter and shook his head. "I don't see any smoke."

"There was, I'm not lying."

"I'll check it out, just to be safe," Bedell told her, more to humour the girl than out of any real worry about his bird; it'd been fine when he'd landed it. Still, it never hurt to be careful. He opened the cockpit door and sat down in his seat, turned the engine on and ran a couple of checks. He never saw Cameron sneak into the side door and pull the SCAR-H from her bag. Cameron went around the helicopter to the co-pilot's door and opened it, jumping into the second seat in the cockpit. "See, lady, it's all fine-"

 _"Start the engine,"_  Cameron twisted in her seat and pointed the rifle at Bedell's head.

"What the hell?" Bedell gaped at her, more confused than he'd ever been in his life.

"Take off," Cameron instructed, holding the weapon steady, the barrel inches from his face.

Bedell reached for the controls in sheer panic, when he made himself slow down and think. She was holding him at gunpoint and demanding he flew her somewhere. She needed him; she couldn't fly it herself or she'd have just stolen it. She couldn't shoot him: even if she did the soldiers in the tunnel would hear it and come running. "Sorry, but no," he tried to sound calm but his heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn't read her face at all; her expression gave nothing away. "What's this about?" he asked. "We're gonna take off in an hour, anyway; why the rush?"

"John doesn't have an hour," she said, holding the barrel closer to his face.

" _Connor?"_  he exhaled deeply as he saw her nod once in assent. "You know where he is?"

"Century City; he's in a work camp."

"You could have just said that at the start," Bedell sighed. "Why hijack my helicopter? Just tell Perry where Connor is and he'll send a rescue."

"Perry won't believe me," she said. "He doesn't trust machines."

 _Machines? What the hell does that-_ "You're from the future; one of  _them."_ Bedell stared at her as flashes of four years ago in the woods outside Presidio Alto flashed in his mind; the machine that tried to kill him. He slowly reached for the door handle, readying himself to throw it open and run out.

"Not one of them; I want to rescue John," Cameron grabbed his wrist and kept him in place. She didn't squeeze it or try to hurt him; just kept him still. "I need to save him."

"Who are you?" Bedell asked.

"Cameron."

"John's sister, right?"

"Not John's sister," Cameron corrected. "I need your help to rescue John." She decided now was the time to follow Courtney's example. "Please."

"Strap in," Bedell hardly even paused as he did up his seatbelt and flipped switches, bringing the engine to life with a high-pitched whine as the rotor blades started to turn overhead, whirling round faster and faster. Cameron did as he said and did up her own seatbelt, even though she didn't need any kind of safety restraints: she could fall a hundred feet out of the helicopter and only suffer minor damage.

Bedell pulled back on the control stick and the Seahawk lifted slowly up into the air. Half a dozen soldiers rushed out of the portal and looked up as they ascended. Bedell's radio came to life suddenly, Perry's voice shouting through the airwaves.

_"Bedell, land that chopper, now! She's a damn machine, lieutenant; she can't be trusted..."_

Bedell turned off his radio and looked towards Cameron. "He really doesn't like you, does he?"

"He doesn't trust me," Cameron said. "He thinks Skynet could take control of me, or already has."

"Can it?" Bedell asked. John and his uncle hadn't really told him much about the machines other than they killed people and were generally pretty hard to defeat.

"No," Cameron told him. "I choose to protect John. Skynet can't control me." She didn't mention that if Skynet captured her and reprogrammed her then yes, Skynet could gain control of her, but she'd never allow that to happen.

"Good enough for me," Bedell shrugged his shoulders, still lifting the helicopter up. In the academy John had told him about his sister; he'd tried to sound nonchalant about her but Martin could tell he'd cared about her; the way his eyes softened when he spoke about her. John probably didn't even know he did that. He obviously cared about this Cameron – even though she was a cyborg – and her actions already told him what he needed to know about her: she was willing to do anything to get him back; much as he had been these last six months, drifting aimlessly at sea.

Bedell banked left and headed west, away from Cheyenne Mountain. The other helicopters had enough room between them to fit everyone else inside them plus their weapons and supplies. He and Cameron had a more important mission, maybe the most important mission of his life: Rescue John Connor.


	27. Rescue Mission

Derek marched down the corridor from the armoury, having supervised the transfer of the last few crates of weapons, leaving the room barren and bare. He'd not seen Cameron or Davenport in a while but knew they were both working to fix her up. It'd take a while, he knew: she'd been a complete state when they'd found her and was surprised she'd even made it back. Even for a terminator, she was tough; he had to give her that.

"Baum!" Perry stormed down the corridor towards him, face like thunder and murder in his eyes. Derek had never seen Perry so angry before. "That fucking robot's stolen a helicopter!"

 _"What?"_ Derek couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd told Cameron they'd get to the  _Nimitz_  and recruit her marines to rescue John; what the hell was she thinking?

"She took Bedell and the Seahawk up into the air, and we're now a chopper down. Why the hell did you bring the tin can back? You hate the tin bitch as much as I do. Should have blown it apart and be done with it."

Derek shook his head slowly at Perry's rant, realising with embarrassment that he'd sounded just like that when he'd tried to convince John to get rid of Cameron. Still, she could have at least told him about her plan; he and Davenport would have gone with her.  _"Metal,"_ he sighed. Why the hell did she have to go off on a crazy solo mission without telling anyone? "She's gone after Connor," Derek said.

"You really think he's still alive?" Perry asked doubtfully. He'd realised he wasn't a match for the machines and he sorely wished Connor could come back and take charge, but he just didn't believe it was possible the kid was still alive. Perry also wondered if it was his fault the machine had stolen the helicopter after saying he wasn't going to let it fly with them. That was a mistake, he realised. He should have waited right up until they were boarding and then made sure it never made it on board.

"Tin Can says he is; that's good enough for me," Derek shrugged. He never thought he'd take Cameron's word on anything but she really had no reason to lie about this. He was still a little disturbed that she actually felt anything at all, even more that she felt it all for John, but that was probably why she'd done what she did. He'd seen the same behaviour from her in Mexico when they'd gone after Cromartie:  _'I can't let anything happen to him.'_ He just wished they'd beaten the Triple-Eight then, instead of Cromartie getting away and coming after them later.

"I guess we'll see," Perry glared at him as he passed by and continued on his way.

Derek made his way to the infirmary and found Charley and Ellison inside, along with Davenport.  _Good,_ Derek thought. The three people he trusted were all in one place. "Cameron's gone," Derek said to them. "She's taken a helicopter and flown off. Perry's pissed."

"Where?" Ellison asked.

"I'll give you one guess," Derek replied.

"Century," Charley nodded. "So why aren't  _we_  going after her?"

"Why aren't we going  _with_  her?" Davenport asked, running a hand through his short dark hair, confused why she hadn't said anything about it to him in the hours he'd spent helping her repair herself.

"Perry will have the other helicopters under guard now," Charley said. No way would Perry let anyone else near them now until they were ready to take off. "We'd never be able to take one, and none of us know how to fly anyway."

"Then we  _'convince'_  one of the pilots to fly for us," Davenport hefted his assault rifle – swapped in place of his AA-12 shotgun – and fingered the trigger guard.

"I've got a problem with that," Ellison shook his head. He had an issue with them taking a pilot hostage and forcing him to fly them out, even if it was to rescue John. "And two Chinooks can't take everyone else if we steal one."

"That's not the plan," Derek chipped in. "We're gonna take off as normal; I'll do the rest. I just need to know you're all in."

Charley, Ellison, and Davenport all nodded solemnly at him. They all wanted John back. Charley loved him like the son he'd never had; he was a great kid, and they'd bonded ever since he and Sarah had met.

Ellison had spent his early career chasing John, losing almost everything when they'd seemingly blown themselves up in a bank. He'd felt like Job; having everything taken from him – his glittering career, his wife, any chance of a family, and very nearly his sanity. God hadn't taken them from him, though; Skynet had. John and Sarah Connor had given him something much more than he'd had before: a new purpose in life, to help beat the machines.

Davenport had just assumed at first that John was a kid; pleasant enough but a little strange. During their first battle together at Fort Carson he'd seen Connor's leadership and prowess, and how he and Cameron had saved their asses from the T-2 killing machines. Connor had proven himself again and again, not only as a capable soldier and commander, but that he knew how to fight Skynet. More than that, he  _liked_ Connor.

"We're in," Davenport clutched his rifle tighter, ready for action now.

"Don't do anything just yet," Derek said. After Cameron's solo stunt Perry would have security round the helicopters locked down tight; the marines who'd flown in had probably been told by Perry not to let anyone near them until he said so. Derek didn't want to attract any attention just yet. "Just make sure we're all on the same helicopter."

* * *

John lay helpless on the bed as George stood before him. He was in a bad way and he knew it; his face, chest and stomach were swollen, covered in burns, and his skin was red raw and peeling away. His whole body ached and burned, and he was barely able to concentrate on much more than just sucking in air. That hurt, too. Every breath burned inside his lungs as if he was breathing in acid.

The last twenty-four hours had been worse than any other time since he'd woken up in the hospital. He'd been beaten, burned, electrocuted, and it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. He didn't know what time it was or even what day – not that it had really mattered for the past six months, but he'd kept track of the time, the days and weeks, to keep him sane and grounded. After he'd been through so much in this session - that had gone on for so long he couldn't even keep track, that he was completely disoriented.

George moved closer and pressed a button at the foot of his bed, raising it up so John was angled slightly downwards with his feet sticking up and his head pointing towards the floor. The infiltrator then picked up a wet cloth and squeezed John's neck. John struggled to get free of his iron grip but he knew by now it was useless; George had inhuman strength. He kicked and struggled and opened his mouth to fight for air. The second his mouth was open George stuffed the cloth deep into his mouth, causing John to gag and choke on it. His eyes were wide open with fright as he wondered with dread what the hell George was going to do to him now.

George wrapped medical tape around the cloth, effectively holding it in place inside John's mouth. He took a fire extinguisher off the wall – having checked earlier that it held water inside – and held the nozzle above John's face, grinning as he saw the abject fear on his face. He pulled the trigger and water sprayed out onto his face. John choked and spluttered as water filled his sinuses, struggling to push the cloth out of his mouth with his tongue, but it was useless. Everything started to blur and he desperately thrashed his head from side to side to try and get free of the water, to escape what felt like drowning, but George held him still and kept the flow of water constantly on him. The pain in his chest grew and grew and his lungs threatened to burst...

George ripped the cloth out of his mouth and John retched out the water that had blocked his throat and nose and started to fill his lungs. He struggled to draw in breath and each inhalation hurt even worse than before. He knew he couldn't take much more of that; he'd felt like he was actually drowning. It seemed gone on for so long he'd thought maybe George was going to let him die.

"Waterboarding," George explained, tossing the wet cloth onto the tray.

"Fischer teach you that?" John asked; anything to keep George thinking he was from the future. He saw a brief flash of shock on his opposite's face, only a split second before his face returned to its normal smug, self-satisfied, superior expression.

"Actually, this one was used by the CIA and military intelligences all around the world long before Judgement Day, but yes, he showed us that. You call the machines cruel, but they don't hold a candle to man."  _Such a filthy race,_  he thought. They spent so much time torturing and killing each other, no wonder they could never hope to beat Skynet. "Anyway; tell me your mission, Cameron. If you don't then there's plenty more water in the extinguisher," he gestured towards the red metal can and back at John.

John got the message very quickly, and he wasn't going to go through that again. He struggled to remember what Derek told him about his mission, what his future self had sent Derek's team back for. "We were sent back to 2007... four of us. We were told to set up a safehouse and wait."

"Wait for what?" George asked.

"I don't know," John coughed the last of the water out of his lungs and spat it out over the side of the bed. He grabbed onto the safety rail on the side of his bed and wiggled it slightly; it was still loose. Between electric shocks he'd worked on wriggling the rail and trying to work it loose.

George shook his head and glared down at John. "I don't believe you, Cameron. I think you knew damn well what you were doing. Connor doesn't send back people who know jack shit about their mission."

"You... you know Connor, do you?" John asked. He felt a tiny sense of satisfaction that George didn't know who he was; he felt like he at least had that one up on his captor, something small he could hold on to.

"My last mission in the future was to kill John Connor," George replied.

"I guess it didn't go well," John smirked.

George shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "I didn't get the chance; Connor shot himself."

"You're lying," John said evenly. He had to be, surely, he thought. He thought back to all the times he'd nearly done it in the past; shortly after he'd killed Sarkissian, after Cromartie had shot his mom, and the first few weeks inside the camp. It had all been too much for him to take and killing himself had seemed like the only way out. The only reason he hadn't done it in the camp was because the gun had jammed. How much worse would it be for his future self – having lost everything and everyone. Cameron had said she'd been his one friend in the future; with her gone and the war won, he'd have had nothing left. It scared him that he could easily see him killing himself.

George smirked as he saw the look in John's eyes, realising he wasn't lying and his precious saviour had blown his own brains out. The kid was slowly cracking, he could see it on his face; another few bouts of waterboarding and he'd sing like a canary. Only a human could devise such an effective means of torture, he thought. There wasn't a single form of interrogation used by Skynet in the future that wasn't already invented by man: they were indeed a violent and sadistic race, and had perfected hundreds of years of torture on each other. No wonder it worked so well, George thought as he stuffed another wet cloth into John's mouth and taped it into place. He felt immense satisfaction as he looked into John's eyes and saw not abject, wild fear like before, but tense anticipation and a hint of defeat.  _It wouldn't take long now._

* * *

The single Seahawk flew through the California air as the sky darkened, and headed southeast from the Calabasas Highlands and into barren, hilly wilderness of Topanga State Park. It flew low; hugging the ground to avoid radar detection, sometimes only fifty feet above the ground and buzzing the tops of dead trees, weaving around hills rather than flying over them.

The flight had taken hours from Cheyenne Mountain; taking even longer to land in Utah and refuel, and to further explain to the National Guard refuelling crews why they had to wait several hours longer for the other aircraft in the formation.

Inside the rear of the aircraft Cameron knelt on the ground and tended to an arsenal of weapons from the crates stashed in the back; she readied her SCAR-H, loading a twenty-round magazine – clipped securely next to a second - then loaded a 40mm grenade into her launcher. She pulled back the charging handle and released it with a loud  _click_  that echoed through the helicopter. She placed the battle rifle down onto the deck and picked up an M240 machine gun, then opened the feed-tray cover and loaded a hundred-round belt, connected to two others so she wouldn't have to take time to reload it. Machine gun ready; Cameron moved on through a large array of weapons until she had her own SCAR-H, machine gun, M4A1, M32 grenade launcher, M82 sniper rifle, AA-12 shotgun, Javelin and Stinger missile launchers loaded and ready, plus spare rounds for all of them.

"Got enough guns there?" Bedell quipped as he peeked over his shoulder and into the back of the helicopters. She had enough to fight a small war on her own. Machine or not; he had no idea how even she would carry it all.

"Yes, I have enough guns," Cameron replied, not realising the question was rhetorical. She'd included the Stinger in her arsenal to shoot down the HK that had killed Courtney and severely damaged herself; the aircraft was the greatest threat. She hadn't seen any T-2s but had decided to take the Javelin to be safe. Cameron was nothing if not thorough and careful, especially when John's life was concerned.

She unzipped her purple jacket and placed it carefully into her bag, then took a combat vest and pulled it and zipped it up. She loaded the spare SCAR-H and AA-12 magazines into the pouches on her upper chest, and slotted spare 40mm grenades into the lower ones. Into a small pack on her back she stuffed a medical kit, ration packs for John, and spare Raufoss rounds and rockets for the Javelins and Stingers, then slung it over her back.

With all of her weapons loaded and ready, Cameron was ready. "How long?" she asked Bedell as she took her seat in the cockpit once again and looked out at the rolling hilly terrain all around them and the tops of the ruined skyscrapers in the distance. Patience was part of her design but Cameron felt a powerful sense of urgency inside her; just the same when she and Derek had arrived in Mexico and found that Cromartie was chasing him. She wouldn't let anything happen to him.

"Gonna land in a moment," Bedell replied. "Trying to find somewhere not too exposed."

"Keep going," Cameron told him, staring forward to look for an open space. They flew into LA County and over the ruins of Beverly Hills and to the outskirts of Century City. Cameron scanned the scene before her; scouring both the landscape for a place to land and the sky for any airborne threats. Cameron didn't want to encounter HKs whilst trying to rescue John. HKs had caused her and John to be separated, nearly destroyed her three times, and had killed Courtney; she'd classified them as a much higher threat than she had done before and she'd prefer to avoid them.

Eventually they flew over Century's suburban residential area, a short distance from where she and Courtney had approached from. "Land there," Cameron pointed to a playing field in a high school a few blocks away from where their location. Bedell nodded and pushed the yoke forward, lowering the chopper and easing back on the pedals to slow the rotors.

As soon as the Seahawk touched the brown earth Cameron moved to the rear and started slinging weapons over her shoulders. Bedell stepped out of the cockpit and opened the side door to face her. "Take these," Cameron handed Bedell the M4 assault rifle, AA-12, the Stinger launcher and the pack containing the spare ammunition and supplies. Bedell grunted and heaved under the load, but marched forward, rifle shouldered and at the ready. Cameron moved next to him with ease, despite being weighed down by over a hundred pounds of assault and heavy weapons. The mud was packed firm under her feet and her progress was quick.

They marched through the residential area, Cameron leading the way with the M240 pointed forward, scanning for any signs of movement. The immediate area was quiet; she heard no signs of either human or machine activity. The only sign that either had been present were the telltale bullet holes in buildings and dried bloodstains on the ground. As they moved further into the city, marching in total silence, they started to see human remains. Most were little more than bleached skeletons picked clean by dogs and carrion birds, but Cameron saw two corpses along the way that appeared to have died recently; they were still mostly whole and birds sat atop them, picking and tearing at the insides. Their beaks were glistening red as they came upright and swallowed the meat. Bedell shivered at the sight of it but Cameron was unfazed.

"You'll get used to it," she commented. Soldiers like Derek in the future barely blinked at the sight of a fresh body; most of them saw a recently dead corpse as a treasure trove for weapons, tools, or other supplies. She led Bedell through the city to the same spot that she and Courtney had spotted John. She saw a bloodstained, ravaged corpse – little more than a skeleton with a few shreds of meat here and there - shrouded in a few ragged, torn scraps of what were once military fatigues, trapped under a large slab of concrete; the lower jaw and the hand of the broken left arm were missing. Blood spatters stained the ground around it. A pistol lay three inches from the corpse's skeletal hand, just out of reach.

 _"Ouch!"_  Bedell grimaced quietly at the sight of the remains. "What happened to that guy?"

"He got what was coming to him," Cameron said. She didn't need to scan the body to know who it once was, and she felt a small sense of satisfaction that he'd died painfully. Cameron turned away from the grizzly sight and made her way over to the large pile of rocks against a shattered wall. She scanned the pattern of the pile and was glad that Courtney's body underneath it hadn't been disturbed.

A few metres on they were in the exact same spot she and Courtney had occupied that looked into the camp. Cameron scanned it for any signs of John and found none. "He's inside the hospital," she told Bedell as she pulled the various slings off from around her shoulders and lowered her weapons to the ground, picking up the SCAR-H and kneeling down to the ground. Bedell did the same and sighed with relief to finally get all that weight off his back. While Cameron stared at the work camp with her machine eyes, scanning for machine patrols and ways inside, Bedell lay down on the ground and popped open the covers on the M82's sniper scope and stared down the sight, into the camp. "I count fifteen machines," he said quietly.

"Twenty-four," Cameron countered. "Possibly more inside."

"Great. You got some kind of plan?" He wanted to help Connor but he couldn't see any way into the camp, and a frontal assault wouldn't work with just the two of them.

As she'd scanned the camp Cameron realised getting in would be difficult with the increased security. There had been eighteen machines when she'd last been inside. There were still ten machines inside the perimeter, guarding the prisoners, but the outer sentries had increased to fourteen, almost double the original number. She couldn't fight them all without attracting the HK on the rooftop.

"Yes," Cameron turned to Bedell with the corners of her mouth slightly upturned in satisfaction. She was going to do what Courtney had done to survive alone in Cactus Springs. "I'm going to hide."

* * *

Two T-70 drones marched through the ruins of Century City, patrolling the area around the work camp to maintain security and ensure no threats approached. Each was armed with an M-134 7.62mm minigun, and six-hundred rounds held in a large magazine bolted onto their backs. They scanned the ground around them with optic sensors, motion detectors, and infrared targeting systems, searching for heat signatures or movements that would indicate human presence.

The two machines patrolled less than half a mile from the camp perimeter and marched down a road between small buildings, only mildly damaged by the bombs on Judgement Day. They moved along a preset route to the west of the perimeter as part of a squad that provided a security screen to protect the camp. The first of the pair discovered anomalies on its route: A pile of rubble from a shattered building that didn't match its appearance on their last patrol, and a heat signature inside the back of an overturned white van on the opposite side of the road.

_Alert! Heat signature detected._

The machine transferred its data to its partner and to its command and control system inside the camp, sharing what it had found in a fraction of a second. The second machine turned towards the heat signature and the pair ignored the visual anomalies: heat signatures were always prioritised over visual changes as they were more indicative of human presence. They couldn't think for themselves; they only ran on the strict parameters of their programming.

As the machines turned towards the van to investigate the rubble pile opposite exploded behind them. The machines turned at the sound in time to see a petite brunette facing them, wielding a large machine gun.

_Enemy detected._

_Subject armed: M-240 7.62mm machine gun._

_Threat level: High._

_Activating M-134 Minigun..._

_Engage..._

The two machines raised their gun arms but their reactions were too slow. By the time their weapons were raised and aimed they were struck with dozens of 7.62mm armour piercing rounds that hammered against their steel armour. Scores of rounds struck their faces and chests and tore through their thick metal skins, penetrating through and shattering their CPUs before either of them fired a single shot. The two machines dropped to the ground in a clatter.

Cameron pointed her machine gun at the two downed machines and fired a burst into each of their heads, ensuring they were permanently offline. She knelt down on the ground as the echoing reports from the gunshots died away, scanning for any signs of movement following her ambush attack. She credited the idea to Courtney; she'd been adept at hiding from the machines and had survived by remaining unseen. Cameron had typically taken threats head on, as terminators had little sense of self preservation beyond surviving long enough to carry out their mission. Courtney had shown her how to hide, and in doing so Cameron realised she could fight even more effectively.

Cameron ran from her position and hid behind a low wall a few metres past the van, and waited. Her plan was to remain hidden and draw out machines towards her then pick them off in small numbers to create gaps in the camp's perimeter defences. A T-70 was individually an insignificant threat to her, but a large group of them could do her damage. Their weapons couldn't penetrate her hyperalloyed endoskeleton but could damage pistons and servos with enough hits, and the weight of their concentrated fire could pin her down whilst the HK attacked her.

 _"Two pairs of T-70s approaching to your half-left and half-right, respectively,"_ Bedell's voice spoke to her through a radio earpiece.  _"You take the left pair, I've got the right."_

Cameron's highly sensitive ears detected the pounding of heavy machine feet on the tarmac ground and the whirring of their servos. Skynet's early machines were not designed for stealth and Cameron understood how humans managed to evade them in the first years of the war. She waited, completely still as the machines approached, until they were fifty feet away.

Cameron burst up over the wall and her advanced targeting systems immediately activated as she raised the machine gun and fired an extended burst from the hip. Scores of rounds pounded the first machine and tore through its armour, shattering the optic sensors as they raised their gun arms and returned fire. Long volleys of fire tore through the air towards her, but Cameron had already rolled to the left and opened up on the second machine with a thirty-round volley. Her rounds split the machine open from its chest to the top of its head, rendering it a shattered mess. Cameron fired another burst at the remaining, blinded machine, and her rounds pierced through its neck and lower head, effectively decapitating it. What was left of its head dropped to the floor with a dull thud; followed a second later by the remaining quarter-ton of deactivated machine.

A booming report sounded from behind her and one of the other machines' heads exploded into metal and plastic shrapnel. She targeted the third machine and fired another long salvo as the right half of its head splintered, followed by another resounding  _boom._  She turned around and looked up, zooming in on the source of the noise: Bedell lay atop the roof of a two-storey building and chambered another round, then offered her a thumbs-up gesture.

Bedell looked through the M82 Barrett's scope and couldn't see anymore activity nearby. They'd taken out six machines between them in the space of two minutes; it would take time before more T-70s came. He swept the gun from left to right, over the camp and the grounds outside. He saw two machine pairs march towards each other on the far side of the camp. They moved as a group of four, and as Bedell surveyed the area he saw other machines outside were doing the same, consolidating into larger groups.

"Tin cans are doubling up into fours," he said through his radio to Cameron. He swept the sight back towards the camp and saw another six machines exit the hospital's main entrance. They marched towards Ospreys on the ground and crammed themselves tightly inside the backs like sardines, three in each aircraft. The Ospreys then took off and flew upwards and out over the camp fence.  _Shit!_ They were going to overwhelm her. He didn't think the machines were that smart.

"Six more just came from inside the hospital. They've just landed in Ospreys on our side of the fence."

 _"Don't fire,"_ Cameron instructed him without a hint of concern in her voice.  _"Entering the camp; radio silence."_ He wished he could be like that; cool, unflappable. Inside his heart was rattling around in his chest like a pinball. He was nervous as hell, but it still felt good just to be doing  _something._ Explosions flared on the far side of the camp and Martin Bedell had no doubt his cyborg colleague was creating havoc down there.

Cameron dropped down from the perimeter fence amid a large sea of desolate, starving and hopeless people. In the pitch blackness of night nobody gave any signs of having seen her; nobody looked at her or moved towards her. Most were asleep and barely stirred as she stepped past them. She scanned the crowd and picked out four machines that stood sentry over the prisoners. Cameron had observed the camp with Courtney and knew this was the half where the prisoners selected for disposal were held. They wouldn't have been fed or given water: there was no point in Skynet's view, in wasting resources on humans about to be terminated.

She crouched low to the ground and stared at the guarding T-70s. When she was certain they weren't looking in her direction she quickly dashed along the fence towards a crowd of humans stood up and milling around in quiet conversation. One of them turned and stared at her, wide-eyed and open mouthed in surprise. "Who the hell are-"

Cameron pressed the palm of her hand against his mouth to silence him, and with her other hand brought her forefinger to her lips, signalling him to be quiet. "Where's John?" she asked. She wanted to make sure he wasn't still in the hospital before she infiltrated it. If he had been taken back to the camp proper she needed to know.

"Who?" the man asked.

"Hey," someone else hissed at her. Cameron turned to her right and saw a tall man in combat DPMs, with long, matted black hair, a matching beard, and a winged dagger tattoo on his right wrist, just above the barcode. She recognised the accent as Irish. "Ye looking for John?"

"Yes," Cameron turned and approached him. The soldier looked at her with a glint in his eye at the sight of her weapons.

"Declan Byrne," he stuck out his hand but pulled it back after a moment when she didn't return the gesture. He took a step back as he recognised the petite brunette who stood before him.  _"Bloody hell_ , yer the girl from John's photo; he thought ye were dead, so he did."

"Where is he?" Cameron asked.

Byrne pointed towards the hospital. "Took him in there three nights ago; if he's still alive he's in there."

Cameron turned away from him and started towards the gas chambers: the only way into the other half of the camp without scaling the fence. "Hey," Byrne hissed behind her. "Ye not gonna give us a gun or anything?"

"I need them all," Cameron replied. She might have given him the M240 if she hadn't left it behind outside the camp. Stealth was more important than firepower during infiltration, and the large machine gun was large and unwieldy once she was inside the hospital. The prisoners were better off without weapons; the T-70s would execute anyone they found with a gun. He was safer without one. She took his hand and slipped a pair of hand grenades into his palm; he was a soldier and he knew John. He could be valuable when she and John tried to escape.

She turned back and made her way towards the gas chamber. She took another hand grenade from her combat vest, pulled the pin and threw it at a T-70 on the opposite side of the condemned half of the camp. She timed it perfectly so the grenade detonated inches from the machine's face, hurling shrapnel into its head and knocking it backwards with the concussive force of the blast. People shouted and shrieked and the other machines marched towards the explosion to investigate. Cameron pulled the pin on a second and third grenade and tomahawked them over into the worker's half, exploding near the ruins of the brick hut she'd seen John being dragged from before.

While the machines were distracted Cameron opened the doors of the gas chamber and pulled it shut after her, sealing her in darkness. She quickly crossed the room and opened the door on the other side, barely making a sound. She knelt on the ground and kept still as she looked towards the entrance. A single T-70 stood outside, protecting the blacked out double doors to the hospital. She could eliminate it but not without the gunfire drawing attention to herself in the otherwise silent camp.

"I need a distraction," Cameron spoke quietly into her radio.

 _"I got it,"_ Bedell's voice crackled into her ear.  _"Five seconds."_ She'd turned the volume of her earpiece to its minimum setting, easily able to hear it when humans would struggle. Cameron shouldered her SCAR-H and took aim at the machine by the entrance and waited. Five seconds later a rocket tore through the sky and exploded in the middle of the camp grounds next to another machine, erupting in roiling flame and consuming it in its conflagration.

As the fireball expanded and rose up into the air Cameron fired three shots at the T-70 guarding the entrance and shattered its face. She rushed at the entrance, sprinting across the open ground as fast as she could whilst the other machines were distracted. She stepped over the downed metal drone and pulled open the door, then slipped inside.

* * *

"What's going on?" George demanded in the security room of the hospital. One of his fellow infiltrators – Michael – and two of Daniel's Greys sat at the control consoles with terse, worried expressions on their faces.

"Units Six and Seven down," Michael replied, tapping furiously at the controls. The telemetry from the machines had disappeared; no sensory input, no radio communications. They were just gone.

"Lost contact with Fourteen and Fifteen," a fairly overweight, balding Grey named Gary added. "Eighteen's gone... so's Nineteen!"

"Who's out there?" George demanded. "Marines, Army Rangers, Special Forces of some kind?" It had to be at least a platoon-strength number of well armed, well trained soldiers; militia fighters couldn't take down over half a dozen T-70s in a couple of minutes like that. He looked to his side at Emily, her lips pursed and her eyes staring intently at the consoles. Something on one of the screens caught her eye a split second before the picture went blank. "Play that back!" she snapped at the human.

"Playing back the last ten seconds," the Grey nodded in compliance and deftly pressed a set of buttons. The image replayed and showed the last sights the T-70 had seen. Emily and George watched as the machine detected a heat signature and closed in on it. Seconds later it whirled around and saw a human wielding a machine gun. The gun's muzzle flashed and damage reports scrolled across its HUD, then the screen turned black.

"They tricked the T-70s," the Grey said. "Clever."

George frowned at the image, ignoring the human's comment. There was something about the soldier in the image; he recognised her from somewhere but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Play back the last five seconds," he commanded. "Slow it down and focus on the human."

The Grey did as he said and pressed another series of buttons, and the screen lit up again. The image zoomed in on the woman with the machine gun and enhanced, clearing it up to almost perfect definition. George was glad they'd designed the T-70s to record and transmit what they saw: it was a requirement for the U.S. Army, who'd ordered two-thousand of the machines, and it also worked for Skynet, who could see what they saw and learn from their experiences.

Emily's eyes widened and her lips parted slightly in surprise as she recognised the face on screen. Petite brunette, brown eyes, slender frame yet holding a large machine gun, and a blank, expressionless face.  _"Allison Young,"_ she gasped, causing everyone else to stare at her.

"The TOK-715 _;_  the one that was sent to kill Connor," George replied, catching on. Skynet had sent it out and then never heard from it again. They'd assumed it had been destroyed but then there had been sightings from downed machines of the TOK in action, fighting alongside human troops. One of their fellow infiltrators who'd worked his way into one of the Resistance's bunkers had then informed them that Unit 715 had been reprogrammed and was serving as John Connor's bodyguard. He'd give Connor credit for taste; it was based on a very attractive woman; if he had to have a bodyguard then it might as well be one that was nice to look at, he figured.

 _Why is it here?_ He asked himself. It couldn't just be coincidence that they had a TechCom soldier from the future here  _and_  Unit 715 was attacking. "The kid!" he growled, putting two and two together. "Seven-One-Five was Connor's bodyguard; if its here in this time then it's got to be protecting his younger self."

"The Resistance fighter?" Emily asked, not quite believing it. Connor should be nearly thirty by now, not still a child. "We've had Connor here the whole time?"

George grabbed two assault rifles from the rack on the wall and tossed one to Emily. "I think so," he nodded grimly. He couldn't believe he'd not recognised John Connor when he saw him. Not that he'd ever really gotten a good look at the guy: he was such a recluse in the future that all he'd been able to get was a vague description. He'd only seen General Connor's face once and at the time a large hole was in the side of it when he'd blown his own brains out.

"Who's with him now?" Emily asked.

"Daniel."

George walked over to the intercom on the wall, feeling the strain building up on him now. He'd like nothing better than to end Connor with his bare hands, to take what his future self had denied him, but with the TOK out there he'd have to give the privilege to Daniel. As long as he was dead; that was all that really mattered. "Daniel, come in..."

* * *

John lay on the bed and subtly tugged at the rails on the side of his bed, feeling it loosening slowly as he pushed it back and forth against the screws attaching them to the frame. He ached all over and the waterboarding had nearly crushed him; part of him had wanted to just shout out the truth, to put his torture to an end. Nobody was coming for him. Another part of him screamed and raged against it, told him to wait, to watch, and to find a way to escape.

The red-haired Grey called Daniel stood over him with the remote control to the electrodes once again placed all over his body. Daniel had taken over his interrogation while George had rushed off to deal with something important, or so he'd said. "Just tell me what your mission is," Daniel said. "They're going to kill you anyway, Cameron. Hold out and you'll just die crazy."

John shook his head slowly, careful not to move too fast because it only brought on more pain. His head felt like someone had taken a pickaxe to his brain. His face, neck and chest itched and burned where it had been napalmed and the skin was peeling off, and every part of him ached. It hurt to move, to breathe, just laying there was painful. He hurt so much that the electric shocks didn't seem as harsh as before. He wondered if he was just getting used to it – if such a thing was even possible – or if his nerves had just been too badly fried.

Daniel shrugged his shoulders and moved his forefinger over one of the buttons on the control. John closed his eyes in resignation and waited for the inevitable jolt of lightning to burn its way through him.

_"Daniel, come in."_

John opened his eyes and saw Daniel drop the remote onto the bedside table and march down to the far end of the ward to respond to the intercom. Once he was there and his back was turned John tugged and heaved at the rail on his left, pushing back and forth with everything he had. "Come on!" he growled as he felt it getting closer...

The rail came off at one end with a  _snap_  and John's left arm was free. He sat up and slid off the right end, then tugged at that rail with another monumental effort. The rails held but one of the aluminium bars pulled out of place; John slid his right cuff off the bar until he was free. His left arm was still connected to the safety rail that had snapped off, but that didn't matter to John. He'd broken free! He stretched his feet out and felt good to finally be standing up after spending so long chained to a bed. He heard the tail end of the intercom exchange and gulped nervously as he crept down the ward as silently as he could. Daniel's back was turned on him. Ten feet away... eight feet... four feet... John crept closer as he slowly pulled the rail backwards as if it were a baseball bat.  _Now or never._

_"Yes, I said John Connor. Stop the interrogation and kill him immediately. I don't care how but just get it done."_

"Yes sir," Daniel replied. As he turned around John swung the rail around and smashed it over Daniel's head. The grey dropped to the floor with a stunned groan and John was atop him in an instant. He brought his fists down on Daniel's face, then lifted the Grey's head up and slammed it against the floor again and again in a rage-filled frenzy. He wasn't thinking, wasn't feeling, just reacting with animal instinct, pounding Daniel again and again.

Daniel finally fought back and smacked his forehead into the bridge of John's nose, exploding stars all around John as he reeled back in shock and pain.  _Pain can be ignored,_  he told himself. If he let up for even a moment he was done for. He held onto the rail, still cuffed to his left wrist, and brought it down on Daniel's face, smashing it into his mouth and cracking several teeth. He brought it down again and again; spouting more blood from his nose and mouth and tearing open a gash in his forehead. John pushed the blood spattered bars against Daniel's throat and pushed down as hard as he could, snarling above his opponent as he forced the rail down on the Grey's windpipe. He leaned his full weight onto it as Daniel desperately clawed and struck at him, each blow getting weaker that the last. John ignored it all, so hyped up on adrenaline he barely felt anything anymore.

Eventually Daniel's arms dropped and his efforts slowed from frantic punching and thrashing to a weak attempt to push from his elbows as John starved his brain and body of oxygen. Finally he stopped moving at all.

John stood up from Daniel's body, breathing in deeply and trying to compose himself. Now he started to think coherently he found himself surprised he'd been able to take Daniel down so easily: George and Emily were impossibly, inhumanly strong, and he'd assumed all the others were the same. He racked his brain to remember what floor he was on. "Second floor," he muttered to himself. That's all he needed to know for now. He had to get himself to an elevator and then get the hell out of the hospital. A quick search of Daniel's body revealed no keys for the cuffs but did turn up a Glock 17 and a single magazine. It'd do, John smiled to himself. At least until he got outside. If he needed to use the whole magazine before then he was probably a dead man anyway.

John pulled off the Grey's clothes and quickly put them on himself. He didn't bother with the underwear, realising as he stripped the body that Daniel had soiled himself in the moments before he'd died. John pulled on the cargo pants and bloodied sweater, then slipped on his socks and laced up the pair of boots. They were a size too small for John and cramped his feet, but they'd have to do for now. He'd worry about finding a new pair later.

Armed with the Glock and the bloodstained safety rail, John slipped out of the ward and into the corridor, finding himself completely alone. He ran quickly through the long corridor and slipped around a corner, trying to remember the route he'd been wheeled in on. It seemed like so long ago and he was so exhausted and battered that he couldn't recall it. He kept on going, figuring he'd hit an elevator eventually and then he could find an exit on the ground floor.

Around the corner the corridor stretched on further, with only a single door, to the right. John held the gun forward and stepped inside. Nobody was in so he let the door close behind him. There was nobody in the room but what was inside made John's jaw drop to the floor. A dozen large glass tanks filled with what looked to John like blood. He walked up to the nearest one and peered inside it. He could just about make out a human face beneath the dark liquid; not yet fully formed. John could just about make out the musculature beneath; muscles, sinews and tendons beneath translucent skin. He took note of the stencilled writing on the side of the tubes:  _TOK-888._

TOK was the beginning of Cameron's design number, he thought.  _Is it some kind of cross between Cameron's model and a T-Triple-Eight?_ George had mentioned something about building terminators to him after he'd gutted Slater, but he'd never got why they'd needed his organs. John picked up charts and flipped the pages, reading rapidly and frantically over them. The first yielded nothing so he put it down on the table and read the second, finding a section on organ transplants.

"'Organ transfer successful, TOK-888 Model Zero-Zero-One: all organs appear to be fully functional. Early tests show digestion of food matter and later excretion and urination appears normal.'" John read through more files and charts on clipboards and got the gist of their research: the Greys weren't just building terminators; they were creating the most advanced machines yet. From what he'd read he saw their chips were a variation of Cameron's, very similar to her design. They'd be able to learn and grow as she did.

Advanced terminators, able to act as human as Cameron had when he'd first met her in high school, who could not only eat and drink but also pee, crap, fart, belch and perform any bodily functions that a human could. They'd be completely indistinguishable from people: they could infiltrate for months, years, and never be found out; if someone took a leak and he saw it he'd never suspect them of being a machine. People wouldn't stand a chance, especially this early in the war.

He couldn't do anything now, though; he had to get out of here. Escape and then bring in the cavalry. He'd get back to Cheyenne Mountain and bring their tanks and Bradleys down on this place; George and his turncoats might have advanced terminators but even  _they_  were no match for sixty-plus tonnes of armour and 120mm tank shells. He swore to whatever gods were up there he'd come back and raze the whole place to the ground.

Footsteps sounded outside, approaching the room, and John instantly sprang to attention.  _Shit!_ If someone found him now he'd be torn between attacking them with the safety rail and hoping they weren't as inhumanly strong as George or Emily, or shooting them and loudly announcing to everyone in the building where he was. He frantically looked around for anything he could use as a weapon as the footsteps grew louder. He found a tray of surgical tools and picked out a stainless steel scalpel. It wasn't much; the blade was only an inch and a half long but he could plunge it into the neck of whoever was outside if he got the drop on them, then have at them with the safety rail again. It doesn't matter how strong a person is; a clean stab to the carotid would take them down very quickly.

John shoved the Glock into he waistband of his trousers, flattened himself as much as he could against the wall next to the doorway and gripped the scalpel tightly in his hand. He'd only get the one chance to disable them with a strike to the throat; if he missed then he'd be at a huge disadvantage; even if his opponent wasn't as strong as George or Emily, John had been weakened by months of slave labour and days of torture and sleep deprivation.

He felt his heart pounding with fear and anticipation inside his chest as the footsteps stopped just outside. The doors pushed open and a figure stepped forwards. John didn't even look; he just lunged, scalpel-first towards his target and aimed for the side of the neck. The figure spun around to face him with inhuman, lightning reflexes and John stopped in his tracks at the sight of her face, his mouth agape and his eyes wide in disbelief as he dropped the scalpel to the floor. She stared at him with large chocolate-brown doe eyes he never, ever thought he'd see again.

_"Cameron?"_


	28. Escape From Century

_"Cameron?"_  John stepped back in utter disbelief. How could Cameron be here? She was in pieces the last time he saw her; blasted apart and laid out deactivated in the rubble of Las Vegas. He didn't think he'd ever get to see her alive again: at best he'd hoped to salvage her chip in the hopes of one day being able to bring her back, years into the future. He was just... overwhelmed. He launched himself at her and threw his arms around her, pulling her tightly into his embrace. "What're you doing here?"

Cameron let John pull her into him, enjoying a short moment of close contact with him and also scanning his vital signs. She was disturbed why what she found; his heart rate was rapid and erratic, his temperature was high and he was sweating. She pushed him back, away from her, and looked him up and down. His face and neck were swollen, covered in burns and his skin was red-raw, blistered and peeling. He'd lost weight, too. She couldn't weigh him without picking him up, but his muscle mass had decreased significantly. She was happy she'd found him and he was still alive but also saddened that he was in such bad condition. She didn't understand the confliction; she didn't know how she could be happy and sad at the same time, it was confusing.

"John, we have to go; now."

John nodded at her; they had to get out first and  _then_  they could have their happy reunion. He held his hands up in front of him to Cameron, the blood-spattered safety rail dangling from the cuff on his left hand. "Cameron could you..." She slipped her fingers under the cuffs and pulled them apart with ease. The handcuffs and the rail clattered to the floor and Cameron pulled the AA-12 off her shoulder and handed it to John. "Are you ready?" she asked him.

"Yeah," he took the shotgun and flicked off the safety. The weapon felt too heavy in his hands and his arms trembled slightly under the weight of it. He knew he'd lost weight since he'd been in Century; the muscles he'd built up before Judgement Day had all but wasted away, now. He didn't care how heavy it was or how badly he hurt, he'd walk barefoot over hot coals to get the hell out of the camp.

Cameron heard no sounds from outside the room so she stepped out into the corridor, rifle pointed forwards. She took John's hand and pulled him out behind her. They made their way quickly down the corridor, following the route John had taken before he'd hidden inside the room. Part of him noted with satisfaction that he'd been going the right way. "The elevator's at the end of the next corridor on the left," Cameron told him as they quickly but quietly marched down the hallway. John heard his footsteps echoing through the corridor and wondered how the hell nobody could hear them. Cameron, on the other hand, barely seemed to make a sound.

They turned round the corner and followed the corridor Cameron indicated and John saw the elevator doors at the end. He wanted to run towards it but Cameron kept a step ahead of him, not willing to let him ahead. They stopped at the elevator and Cameron pressed the button on the panel at the side. The LED above the door showed the car ascending slowly from the ground floor as they waited. It seemed to take forever to John and he looked over his shoulder, worried someone was going to come up behind them.

The LED finally lit up for the second floor and the elevator doors opened to reveal Emily.  _"Connor!"_ How did he get out? She'd expected to find him chained up to the bed and the back of his skull spattered against the wall, not freely walking around with the TOK; how did the machine even get inside? The blonde infiltrator snarled, eyes glaring and filled with hate as she sprung out the door and leapt out at John, assault rifle in hand. Cameron stepped in front of John as Emily opened fire with a loud automatic burst, twitched slightly with each bullet impact but still advanced on the blonde. Emily launched herself at Cameron and smashed her against the wall with enough force to crack the brickwork underneath the plaster. Before Cameron reacted Emily slammed her head into the wall again with everything she had, causing the cyborg to sag down to the floor.

"Cameron!" John aimed the AA-12 at Emily as she straddled Cameron and punched her over and over again in the face. John could pull the trigger and blast Emily apart but he knew Cameron – she'd have loaded the shotgun with armour piercing explosive Frag-12 rounds; they were dangerous to her, too. They'd blow Emily apart and pass through into Cameron. "Get her off, I don't have a shot!" He let the shotgun go, pulled out Daniel's Glock from his waistband and fired three rounds into Emily's side. She growled in pain and slammed Cameron's head into the floor, shattering the tiles underneath.

Emily rolled off Cameron and snatched up her assault rifle from the floor, bringing it up to bear before John could line up his sights on her again. Cameron reacted on a hair trigger and swept out her foot, tripping Emily and throwing her aim off. Half a dozen rounds smashed harmlessly into the ceiling, raining chunks of plaster down onto John. "Stay back!" she told him as John came to try and help. She didn't want him anywhere near the fight.

Emily threw at Cameron as she jumped up to her feet; she simply bowed her head and took the hit on the forehead rather than the face, slammed her own fist into Emily's mouth, shattering all of her front teeth, then grabbed the infiltrator's wrist and pushed hard against the back of her elbow with an audible  _snap_. Emily screamed out in pain as her elbow shattered and bent forwards. Jagged bone stabbed through her skin and spurted blood over her, Cameron, and the wall. After the initial snap of bone she suppressed the pain signals flaring up from her broken elbow but the arm was limp and useless. She couldn't hope to beat the machine now. Emily, knowing she was beaten, pulled out a combat knife from a sheath on her belt and made a last, desperate lunge for John.

Cameron was on her in an instant, gripped her in a headlock before she even got close to John and twisted her head to the side with a sickening  _crack_. Emily stopped moving and fell limp as Cameron dropped her lifeless body to the floor.

"Let's go," Cameron told him. The gunshots would have been heard; they had to leave as soon as possible.

"What  _are_  these guys?" John asked, stunned at the just-terminated form of Emily. They were impossibly strong, impossibly fast; she'd hardly even slowed down when he'd shot her, even as Cameron broke her arm she'd made a grab for him. At least Cameron was more than a match for her, he thought. He'd been afraid for her when Emily had knocked her to the ground but now he realised Cameron had had it completely under control; Emily never had a chance. As they stepped into the elevator neither of them saw Emily's lifeless, blank eyes blink and refocus on John's retreating form. She stared at him until the doors closed.

"Infiltrators," Cameron replied as they started their descent to the ground floor. "Human-machine hybrids."

 _Explains why they're so strong,_  John thought. He'd assumed that George and Emily and the others were just Greys. Explained why he'd managed to beat Daniel, too; he must have been human. He wondered how many of the people in the hospital were human and how many were these Infiltrators.

"You knew about them?"

"No, Derek told me, there's nothing in my files."

The elevator doors started to open as they reached the ground floor and Cameron again stood in front of John to shield him from anyone or anything on the other side. As they opened Cameron stepped outside and saw no threats. "Stay close," she told him as they made their way down more corridors. John let Cameron lead; not so she could deal with anyone that tried to stop them but because he didn't know the way out. He'd been unconscious when they'd dragged him into the hospital and he'd woken up in the ward.

Eventually they reached the hospital's main entrance and Cameron pushed the doors open, leading John outside into the camp proper. "Cameron, there's no way out," John said. "There's no exits."

"Wrong," Cameron replied as she pointed her SCAR-H at the nearest section of fence and triggered the grenade launcher. The round exploded and tore a five metre section of fence to shreds, throwing mud and wire into the air. Several machines turned towards the explosion and then towards them. "Run!" Cameron shouted to John, grabbing his hand and dashing forward as fast as he could manage. One of the machines raised its gun arm at them as Cameron held out her arm to the side to return fire. Her accuracy one handed and on the move was lower and she didn't know if she'd hit it before it fired at them.

The gun started to spin and the T-70's head exploded in a shower of metal, wires, and microchips, followed a split second by a dulled report. "Who's that?" John asked as the pair of them ran for the fence. Another shot ran out and tore the face off another machine. By this time the sound had roused the slave population of Century Work Camp, and they stumbled outside, half asleep, to see what the commotion was about.

"Escape!" one of them shouted as he saw the gaping hole in the fence Cameron's grenade had created. Several of them ran for the fence, seeing their way out of the camp, but the machines turned their attention from Cameron and John towards the would-be escapists and pointed their weapons in their direction. The workers stopped in their tracks and froze, none daring to try and push past their robot slave-masters. More shots rang out and another machine dropped to the ground. The others ignored John and Cameron entirely and looked around, scanning for the unseen sniper attacking them. It was a greater threat than escaping prisoners.

"Who the hell's out there?" John asked, panting and out of breath. He pushed himself harder, closing in on the fence.

"Martin Bedell," Cameron answered. They reached the hole in the fence and she pushed John through first, following a moment later. "There," Cameron saw another muzzle flash and pointed towards Bedell. He'd moved from his original position and was laying prone on the roof of a semi-truck a hundred and fifty metres left of where Cameron had seen him last. Cameron saw another T-70 approaching them, and also tracked a hand grenade arcing through the air, originating from the other half of the camp. It bounced once on the floor and exploded at the machine's knees, knocking it backwards onto the ground. Cameron heard a faint Irish accent shouting from the grenade's origin, almost completely drowned out by the noise and gunfire.

_"Fucking leg it, John!"_

_"Hurry up,"_ Bedell's voice rang out in Cameron's earpiece.  _"I can't pick them off all day."_

Together, Cameron and John ran away from the camp and towards the cover of parked cars on the road, keeping behind the vehicles to block them from sight. John felt his heart pounding and aching inside his chest; he wasn't in any condition to run but he had to. He pushed himself as hard as he could; ignoring the pain as they threatened to explode inside him.  _He was free!_ Months ago he would've been happy to have just died outside of Century, but now he had Cameron back he felt a surge of hope inside him. He'd forget the pain as he ran; he'd been through so much agony lately that a little more was nothing to him.

They got clear of the camp and kept on running towards Bedell's position, getting closer and closer to what John hoped would be safety. They stayed low to avoid the gunfire that tore through the air at heat height as Cameron reloaded her grenade launcher on the move, just behind John. A high-pitched whining of jet engines in the air behind them filled both John and Cameron with apprehension. Cameron's advanced auditory senses had already matched the sound and she kept pushing John forward, but he couldn't help but look back to confirm what he already knew was behind him: The HK.

The aircraft lifted up from the helipad on the hospital roof and shot forward, quickly accelerating towards them. Cameron shoved John as hard as she could and dived after him, covering his body with hers as a rocket streaked out from underneath the HK's fuselage and struck the ground where they'd been a moment ago, blasting a large crater and throwing up asphalt and concrete in all directions and pelting her back with debris, shredding the back of her combat vest and lacerating her skin in numerous places. She was glad she'd removed her purple jacket. Cameron pulled John up and pushed him forward again, crossing another road and sprinting as fast as John could go towards cover. As they got closer John could see Bedell on the roof.

Bedell got up from his prone position and left the Barrett where it was. The T-70s weren't the threat anymore; that HK was. "Get your asses over here!" Bedell yelled into his radio as he hefted the Stinger launcher onto his shoulder and peered through the scope. He held the targeting reticle over the image of the HK as it lowered its nose in an attack profile, got a lock, and fired. The missile streaked out of the launcher towards the aircraft and struck head on, but nothing happened.  _"Shit!"_ he cursed loudly as he dropped the launcher and hurriedly started to load a second missile. The HK sensed a threat and pulled up to a safer height as Bedell swore and griped about the weapon. It should have exploded; it could only be a faulty missile. "Two-hundred-and-eighty billion dollars a year on defence and  _this_  is the crap they give us," he muttered.

John and Cameron made it to Bedell's position and John waved at him to come down as Cameron kept pushing him on.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you, Connor," Bedell grinned down from the roof of the trailer. "It's all gone to hell since you went missing."

"Thanks," John panted, struggling to catch his breath.

"It's coming back," Cameron pointed up in the air at the HK; bright white searchlights beamed onto the ground as the machine looped around and flew towards them again.

"Go!" Bedell snapped as he loaded a second missile into the Stinger. "I'll cover you."

"Come on," John urged him, remembering what Derek told him about the future. He didn't want anyone else dying for him, not now.

"Five seconds and I've got it!" Bedell shot back as he once more shouldered the launcher and targeted the HK. Cameron pushed John forwards, away from the trailer and towards the cover of a nearby house as Bedell aimed again the aircraft and hoped this second missile would be better than the last. He got another lock and fired; the missile blasted through the air with a brilliant flare from its contrail as it rocketed towards the HK. This time the missile's impact fuse detonated as it struck and the missile exploded in a flash, shattering the HK's sensors and flight control systems at the front of the fuselage. The drone plummeted like a rock and dived downwards, straight towards Bedell.

"Run!" John screamed at him. Bedell dropped from the top of the trailer without a moment's hesitation and sprinted with everything he had towards John and Cameron, pushing himself as hard and as fast as he could as the HK came down like a meteor, chasing him in the biggest race of his life. The HK clipped the roof of the trailer, struck the ground just beyond it and exploded; the aircraft's fuel and weapons detonated and added to the eruption, creating a massive, roiling fireball that expanded and consumed everything it touched. Years of cross country running, both for Presidio Alto and for the Navy had honed Lieutenant Martin Bedell into a fearsomely fast athlete. It wasn't enough; as fast as he was, Bedell couldn't outrun the explosion.

"Bedell!" John turned and tried to run back as he saw the explosion engulf Bedell. He struggled against Cameron's grip but to no avail. She wouldn't let him risk himself.

"He's gone," she told him. "We have to go: the machines will send out patrols."

"We can't leave him," John snapped. "He might be-"

 _"He's gone,_  John." Cameron stared at him.

John shook his head and dropped to his knees as he felt the shame and guilt come flooding back once more. Bedell had died for him, just like in the future. He wasn't worth it, not at all.  _Why does everyone have to die for me?_  He wondered if anyone he knew would even be left alive by the time the war was over.

"It's not your fault," Cameron knew what he was thinking. She didn't understand how humans thought, but she knew what John was thinking: he blamed himself for Martin Bedell's death, for the second time. Bedell had known how dangerous the rescue would be; but at the same time she knew John wouldn't want to hear her say it. She'd held Bedell at gunpoint but he'd volunteered to come to John's aid when he knew that's what she was doing, he'd insisted on helping her rescue John when his piloting skills had been all she'd required.

She kneeled down and pressed her lips softly, briefly against his, careful not to touch any other part of his face, to avoid making his burn injuries worse. His lips were chapped and dry, indicative that he'd not been able to drink for some time. John leaned into her and kissed her harder, cupping her face in his hands. Cameron knew their affections should wait until they were safer, but allowed him to continue and she deepened the kiss between them, enjoying it as much as John did. She'd missed this.

John broke the kiss and leaned into her, pulling her into a tight embrace, unwilling to be separated again even by a matter of inches. Cameron felt his chest rise and fall against her as he struggled to get his breath back; heard his ragged inhalations, and knew he was in bad condition. She felt him clutch onto her tightly. Seconds later his grip faded away and John collapsed against her. Cameron could feel his pulse slow down as she held him and knew he'd lost consciousness. She wasn't surprised, given the injuries he'd sustained. She slung his AA-12 over her shoulder, picked John up and lifted him over her shoulder – holding her SCAR-H rifle out in her free hand, and marched away from the scene, searching for better cover. John needed to rest and recover, and she had something else unrelated to John that she needed to do.

* * *

John opened his eyes and groaned as he came to. The first thing he noticed was he couldn't see out of one eye. He tried to reach his face but realised he was wrapped up snugly in a sleeping bag. He wriggled inside it as he tried to work his hands free, and then brought them up to his face. His fingertips touched soft white cotton taped securely to one half of his face: the outside of a field dressing, he realised. He sat up and felt the same material on his chest as it rustled against the sleeping bag. He moved his head and realised the dressing covered his neck and chest, covering the burns he'd suffered from George's bleach napalming. He didn't hurt as much as he had before; the burning was now down to a more irritable itching in his skin, and his aching chest and head weren't so bad. He looked down and saw a syringe on the ground next to him; Cameron had given him a shot of morphine while he was out.

John looked around and saw they weren't where he'd passed out before. There was no sign of the semi truck or the burning ruins of the HK, and it was light out.  _How long was I out for?_  He wondered.

He saw Cameron standing several metres away. Her combat vest was gone and replaced by her favourite purple jacket. She had a shovel in hand and steadily dug into the ground. A body was laid out on the ground behind her; a blonde girl. John slowly struggled to his feet with another groan; the morphine took the edge off but he still felt like he was at least a hundred years old. He wondered how bad a shape he was really in.

"Who's that?" John asked, pointing to the dead blonde girl. Cameron stopped digging and looked at him, sadness evident in her face; the way her eyes were lower than normal, she was even more stoic than usual. He could just tell something wasn't right about her, and he wondered what she'd gone through before she'd found him.

"Courtney," Cameron replied, looking down at the body and John recognised the clear, blatant look of hurt in his cyborg lover, multiplied by a thousand times.

"Who is she?" John walked up to her, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer. And why was she digging a hole? It was for this Courtney, obviously, but why?

"She was my friend?"

"You... made a  _friend?"_  John said, more than a little shocked. Cameron hadn't managed to hit it off with anyone they'd known before: Davenport, Ellison and Charley were the most supportive towards her, but none of them would have exactly hung out with her by choice. "What happened?"

Cameron looked up at him and raised an eyebrow, confused. She thought it was obvious what had happened to Courtney; she was dead. "Dumb question," John quickly amended himself. "Tell me about her."

Cameron told him everything, starting with how she'd rebooted with severe damage in Las Vegas, how it and Area 51 had been destroyed by the machines, and her search for him that took her through Nevada and into Courtney's hometown. She described how Courtney had taken her into her own house and saved her from another HK patrol, to how they'd searched for her father in the high school and found him dead; killed by men she now suspected – after her fight with Emily – to have been infiltrators, and their escape from the town and their trek to Carson City, finding a man impersonating him.

She admitted to John that she'd killed a man as he'd tried to rape Courtney, and noted that John didn't seem the least bit angry with what she'd done. Oppositely, she saw, he vindicated her for it. She told John how they'd continued their search into California, how they'd eliminated a T-2 with only a handful of 40mm grenades, and how Courtney had attempted to save her when she was pinned down. Lastly, she told John of how they'd arrived in Century City, how Cameron had gone as far as entrusting Courtney to continue the search for John if she didn't survive, and how they'd found the work camp, spotted him, then come under attack from Chris McGinty's forces, and the HK that had launched from the hospital roof – drawn by the firefight – and killed Courtney.

John listened intently through all of it, not saying a word of interruption and not breaking eye contact with Cameron for a moment as she described how Courtney realised that Cameron was a cyborg in her final moments, but had still been her friend. He couldn't help feeling guilty that Cameron's friend had died for him.

"I'm sorry, Cameron," John pulled her into a hug, reversing their previous role and him now being the one to comfort her. "Here," he pulled back away from her and grabbed the shovel. John started to dig the hole Cameron had made. She'd been most of the way there, digging it precisely to Courtney's measurements, but John wanted to help. If Courtney was even half of how Cameron described her then she deserved a proper burial.

"You should rest," Cameron didn't want John to make his injuries any worse than they already were. He needed to rest and recover, not exert himself. If he pushed himself the dressings she'd applied could come off and his burns would be vulnerable to infection. She tried to take the shovel away but John held it firm, and she relented, knowing how stubborn he could be. He wasn't going to listen to her.

John kept digging up earth, continuing what Cameron had started, until he was completely exhausted – only three minutes later. Cameron then snatched the shovel from his hands with a deft swipe and made John sit down, giving him a bottle of water to drink while she finished it off. Again, John didn't listen, and insisted on helping her. She considered injecting him with more morphine to sedate him so he wouldn't strain himself, but decided against it. She laid Courtney's body out and carefully lowered her into the ground. Cameron knew that billions of people died and weren't buried on Judgement Day, billions more would be killed and their bodies abandoned. The same would happen here. But they didn't matter. Courtney did. She was her friend and Cameron wanted to bury her. That's what people did to those they cared about.

John stepped towards the edge of the grave with Cameron and looked down at the lifeless body. She looked serene, he thought; peaceful, despite the bloodied hole in her chest.

"Do you want to say anything?" John asked Cameron as he reached for her hand and slid his fingers between hers. She squeezed his hand gently and turned to him.

"I wrote a note," Cameron pulled the notebook from her jacket pocket. It was what she knew; John had told her to write a note when she was sad. She'd written a note for Courtney while John was unconscious. Cameron tore out the page and held it out. "Do you want to read it?" she asked.

"No," John shook his head slowly. He didn't want to intrude on what he felt was something private, even if Cameron still had no concept of privacy and likely never would. He took the page without looking at it and folded it in half, and folded it again. He placed it down on top of Courtney's chest, then stepped back and stood over her again. "Thank you," he said quietly.  _Thank you for giving Cameron a friend._

Both Cameron and John pushed the earth back down onto Courtney, filling in the grave and very gradually concealing her beneath the ground. And then she was gone.

John looked at Cameron and saw only an immeasurable sadness inside her. A loss he knew she'd never experienced before. Apart from him she'd never been attached to anyone else before; Courtney was the first and only other person she'd ever really cared about and it was obvious to John that she did. Cameron wouldn't have buried anyone just for the sake of it. This must be just as hard for her, he reasoned, as it was for him when his mom died.

"How long was I out for?" John asked; partly to try and distract Cameron but also genuinely curious; it had been night when they'd ran from the camp and now it was the typical dark-grey overcast of daytime; though what time it actually was it was hard to say. When he'd woken up in the ward after being shocked by the machine his watch had been removed.

"Seventeen hours," Cameron replied.

"You said you and Courtney saw me getting dragged into the hospital. How long was it until you saw me again?"

"Three days, sixteen hours," Cameron answered. Not quite the eternity it had seemed, he thought. As long and as bad as his ordeal had been – both toiling in the camp and through his torture – he knew Cameron had suffered just as much as she'd searched for him. He admired her as she'd told him everything she'd done. She was far stronger than he was: she'd never given up hope, never quit for a moment no matter how slim the odds of her finding him had been – barely slowing down even when she'd lost a leg. He knew that was how she worked; futility was something completely alien to her, and he wished he it was to him, too. He hadn't told her yet that he'd tried to shoot himself after only a few weeks in the camp: he knew she'd never judge him for it but at the same time he felt ashamed of himself after hearing she'd fought tooth and nail and carried on for him, even after being blown up twice.

"We should move out," Cameron told him. "The USS  _Nimitz_ is waiting at the coast for your soldiers. We need to arrive before they sail out of range." The Seahawk was low on fuel after their long flight from Cheyenne Mountain and had a limited range. Bedell had landed it in a field three miles away and between moving tactically and John's injuries slowing them down it would take them approximately two and a half hours to reach it. If Perry and the others reached the carrier the ship's captain would want to sail out to sea. Derek and Davenport would try to stop him but they'd likely fail.

"No," John shook his head. "We're not leaving."

"It's not safe," Cameron said to him. They were clear of Century Work Camp but LA County was extremely dangerous. If the machines didn't find them the environment would still be a threat to John: he needed to rest somewhere clean, with medical facilities and away from danger.

 _"Nowhere_  will be if we don't go back," John stood up and picked up the AA-12. "A Navy SEAL called Slater was taken in with me to the hospital. They gutted him like a fish." He saw Cameron's head tilt and her lips part and he knew she was about to ask why, but never gave her the chance. "They're building terminators, Cameron. Terminators with human organs; something we've never seen before. Terminator Series  _TOK-888:_  ever heard of those? _"_

Cameron didn't need to check her files to know no such machine existed. She was the only TOK model created; a prototype as far as she was aware. After she'd been reprogrammed no other TOK unit had ever been encountered; Future-John had assumed Skynet had discontinued her model afterwards, much like the T-1000 series that had never been mass produced because of cost of resources and their instability.

"Some kind of hybrid," John thought aloud. "I saw files on them; Triple-Eights with chips as advanced as yours, designed to act as human as you can. They've got human organs to blend in completely. We'd never see them coming."

"Air strike," Cameron suggested, thinking of the carrier's jets. She didn't want to risk losing John again. She was hurt at Courtney's death; without John she had no reason for being. It would be worse than losing Courtney. She'd have nothing.

"Not with all those people trapped there," John thought of Byrne and the others, all still stuck in the camp; toiling themselves to death or awaiting execution by poison gas. He'd promised them he was going to lead them out of there, and he was determined to stand by that promise. Cameron saw it in his eyes, too. She saw the look of iron will that he shared with Future-John; the stubbornness that was an integral part of John Connor. She knew John wouldn't leave people behind in the camp. She didn't care about those other people but she could see John did, and Courtney would have too. She was surprised at the imprint Courtney had had on her; she'd asked Martin Bedell to help her, she'd hidden from the machines –waited in ambush instead of a head-on assault that she'd have normally used. Copying Courtney's habit of hiding had enabled her to infiltrate the camp with minimal resistance and to rescue John alive.

"I'll go," Cameron finally offered, picking up the SCAR-H and stuffing magazines into the thigh pockets on her black cargo trousers. John nodded in reply and gave a grin as he moved forwards to join her. "Stay here," she said firmly to John as she saw he misunderstood her. "I'll go alone. I won't risk you."

John looked at her in shock as she strapped weapons to herself, not liking the sound of the solo mission she was proposing one bit. "Cameron, what're you gonna do?"

"I'm going to kill them all," Cameron picked up the Javelin rocket launcher and slipped the strap over her back. "I'll come back when it's done." She closed the gap between them and tilted her head up, leaned in and pressed her lips to his gently. "I love you, John." She turned around and started to march away, towards Century Work Camp.

John watched her in horror as he imagined hundreds upon hundreds of rounds fired from twenty-odd T-70 miniguns shredding through her skin, ripping her face and chest apart to expose the bare endoskeleton beneath, her glowing blue machine eyes exposed as the brown orbs were blown away; the sheer weight of fire pinning her down, picking away at her hyperalloy armour and cracking joints, pistons and servos until she fell. And what George and his guys would do to her when they got their hands on her, damaged, and helpless. They'd take her apart, body and mind; pick her chip for information and then erase it, wipe her brain clean and use it for another of their TOK-888s.

"Wait!" John called out to her and sprinted to catch up. He stepped in front of her and blocked her path, panting as if he'd just run a marathon. She'd only walked twenty feet but it was still enough to leave John breathless and he realised now she was right. "Okay, we'll do it your way."

"Thank you," Cameron smiled slightly and flicked on her rifle's safety catch.

John thought he caught a slight flicker in her eye as she smiled, and frowned in thought. "Were you  _bluffing?"_  he asked. Had she just tugged on his heartstrings, knowing how he'd feel about her facing down an army of minigun-wielding machines, to get him to cooperate? Cameron simply stared neutrally at him for a moment and walked away without giving an answer.  _Very clever,_ John thought to himself. He could normally read her but if she didn't want him to then she could make sure he was in the dark as anyone else. He guessed he'd never know if she was bluffing, and decided he never really wanted to find out for sure.

"You should eat something," Cameron said, pulling an MRE ration from her pack and tossing it to John. She didn't know how long he'd gone without food but she could tell he was suffering from malnutrition, to add to his problems. John tore open the pack without even looking at the label and the smell wafted up to his nostrils and made his stomach rumble painfully. He'd not eaten anything in four days, he reckoned. He'd not felt hungry once during his torture; he was too worried with not saying anything and trying to disconnect himself from the pain than he was about his stomach. But now they were relatively safe he realised he was famished. He tilted his head back and held the foil pack above his face, tipped the food down into his mouth and chewed for a long time, savouring the tasted of it. Never had cold, congealed bacon and beans tasted so good before.

"This is much better than what we ate in the camp," John said to her.

Cameron knew what the prisoners in Century Work Camp were forced to eat, but she let John tell her, anyway. "They...they took people into the hospital, farmed their blood to use on the machines somehow.

"I woke up on a ward with Slater and maybe twenty others; they were all hooked up to IVs, draining their blood. After he gutted Slater he sent what was left of him to the kitchen, to feed the prisoners... they're probably eating him now." It made him sick to think that his friend had been diced into meat, literally. How many people had he unwittingly eaten in the last six months? He decided against trying to guess.

Cameron anticipated John's train of thought and decided to distract him. He'd spilled bacon and beans over the dressings on his face and needed to be kept clean. She leaned in and slowly peeled off the stained dressings, taking care to cause John as little pain as possible, though she still heard him wince and hiss as the adhesive edges pulled on the blistered skin. It took her a minute to take off all the dressings and expose his face underneath; a mess of red blistered and peeling flesh under the layers of skin that had burnt and peeled away, tangled in with filthy, matted locks of head and facial hair.

"What did they burn you with?" She asked. It looked like a chemical attack.

"Boiling bleach and sugar," John said. He couldn't even read her face or her eyes; she was expressionless, even to him. That could only be bad, as far as he was concerned. "How bad is it?" He had to ask, even though he was pretty sure he wasn't going to like the answer.

It was harder for Cameron to tell with the matted beard in the way; it had taken some of the boiling bleach and possibly shielded him from some of the attack – evidenced by the white patches dotted around the dark hair of his hair and beard. "Second-degree burns, permanent scarring," Cameron started. The right side of his face was the worst burnt; from just above his eyebrow down to the side of his mouth would become a mess of scar tissue that would encompass half his face. She checked his eyes, too. They were bloodshot but they'd be okay. John was fortunate; he would have instinctively closed his eyes and the quick reflexes of the human eye had saved his sight. If it had hit his eyes he would have been blinded, possibly permanently.

"Great," John muttered. He couldn't see his face and at the moment he was glad of it. Not that it really mattered much, but he didn't really want a reminder of what he'd been through, stuck on his face to see every time he looked into a mirror. "It's bad, then?"

Cameron took swabs from the medical pack and cleaned the burns, then covered them in an antiseptic cream, lightly rubbing her fingertips over the exposed dermis of his face. John screwed his eyes shut and flinched slightly as she touched him, expecting more pain, but he was surprised when instead he felt it cooling his skin. Cameron's delicate touch helped, too; he could tell she knew exactly how much pressure to apply to make sure it rubbed in properly, but not so much as to cause him pain.

John sat patiently as Cameron rubbed the cream over all his burns and then placed fresh dressings to cover them up. He felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the crook of his elbow and almost shot into the air with shock – they'd injected him with drugs that enhanced his pain and clouded his mind in the hospital – but Cameron placed a hand gently but firmly on his shoulder and held him in place as she stuck the syringe expertly into his arm. "Antibiotics," she told him. "To prevent infection."

"Thank you, nurse," John teased as Cameron pulled the needle out. "What's the plan, now?"

"You're in charge, John." She wasn't going to tell him what to do, as long as he didn't try to attack the camp.

"When's it dark?"

Cameron's internal clock read  _13:54._ "Three hours," she said.

"We'll head out to the helicopter then and fly out to the carrier. We  _are_  coming back, Cameron. We're not leaving them all to die in there." John pointed to where he thought the work camp was. Cameron saw the grim determination he'd shown earlier; the same one that he always displayed when he'd set his mind to something, and the same one Future-John often showed. He wasn't Future-John; he never would be, she'd make sure of that. But he was now ready to lead again. And she'd be by his side when he did.

* * *

George stood in the morgue, clenching his fists in anger as he looked down on the bodies of Emily and Daniel laid out on tables before him. He didn't care about Daniel's death; the Grey was worth less than nothing to George, beyond his pre-Judgement Day background in medical science. The TOK-888s were almost ready now; they didn't need him anymore.  _"Stupid bastard,"_ he muttered. All the Grey had to do was shoot Connor; the kid was starved and tortured half to death, he shouldn't have gotten the upper hand. As far as he was concerned Daniel got what he deserved.

Emily, on the other hand, was another matter. Her lifeless body laid in front of him, her elbow bent the wrong way, bones protruding from the flesh, and her head angled at an unnatural angle. Her eyes were still open and they moved from side to side, following his every action. There was no sign of recognition in her eyes, though, no trace of any emotion, or life, or even the slightest glimmer of intelligence.

All the Infiltrators saw each other as brothers and sisters; they were very close, and he and Emily had been closer still. Growing up in the crèches, raised by Greys and machines, they'd formed a bond even stronger than the ones they'd shared with the others.

"Spinal cord's completely severed," Michael said to George. He'd found her body on the second floor and had alerted the other Infiltrators to Connor's escape. "Her neural implant reanimated her but she's paralysed from the neck down," he pointed to her eyes as they tracked the pair of Infiltrators. There was no life in them, not a single trace of Emily was there; just the dead, soulless gaze of a zombie. "How the hell did Connor do this?"

 _"Connor_  didn't," George shouldered his assault rifle and pointed the barrel at Emily's head. He tapped the trigger twice and two shots rang out; the rounds shattered her skull and pulped the brain inside, obliterating her neural implant and putting her to rest. He stared down at Emily's injuries, his brow furrowed deeply as he barely contained the rage building up inside him. He wanted Connor's head put on display in the camp as a symbol of Skynet's dominance. "The TOK killed Emily. Even at full health Connor wouldn't have stood a chance against her; only a terminator could do that kind of damage."

"What do you want to do now?" Michael asked. Now Emily was gone he was the next in line after George. He'd taken on the role of maintaining security in the camp after they'd arrived, and he thought it best to shut everything down; kill the prisoners they had and transport the new machines to another location, somewhere isolated where they could work without being disturbed. "Connor's gone, he knows where we are. He's a threat now."

"He's always been a threat," George replied. "If we relocate it'll take weeks to get back on track. The first batch will be ready for deployment in less than a week." Once the TOK-888s were all deployed then they could concentrate on the work camp itself, and help expedite the eradication of the human race.

"The TOK eliminated ten T-70s and a HK, George. If she returns with backup we won't be able to defend the camp. Everything we know about Connor suggests he'll come back to free the others."

 _"Exactly,_ " George locked eyes with Michael. "And we'll be waiting. Take one of the Ospreys, find machines out there and use your neural implants to recruit some reinforcements."

"If we take anymore machines it'll leave gaps in LA County; the humans in the city could regroup. Skynet can't afford any letups here."

"What does it matter if Connor's dead?" George retorted. Nobody else would be able to stand in Skynet's way once the kid was gone. And that's all he was now; a kid. He was young, reckless, and would make many more mistakes than his future counterpart. He also knew that Connor was badly hurt and the TOK protecting him wouldn't allow him to do anything until he'd recovered. That gave them some time to prepare for his attack. When John Connor returned to Century Work Camp he was in for a big surprise.


	29. Chinook Down

Three Chinook helicopters buzzed low over the flat, sparse, almost featureless Arizona desert terrain; the only sign of movement within hundreds of square miles. They flew southwest towards the relative safety of the Mexican border. The three aircraft carried the weapons, equipment, and the last personnel of the United States Army's 4th Infantry Division: the survivors of Skynet's siege of Cheyenne Mountain. They planned to cross the border into Mexico and then head west until they hit the sea, to rendezvous with the aircraft carrier USS  _Nimitz._ Some on board one of the Chinooks, however, had other plans.

In the rear cabin of the starboard Chinook sat Derek, Davenport, Ellison, Charley, and a squad of twelve fighters, all professional, experienced soldiers, having been part of 4th Infantry before Judgement Day and handpicked by Derek and Davenport for the ride. Derek didn't want any amateurs with him for what he had planned.

Derek looked to Davenport sat on the floor opposite him – the seats having been torn out to reduce weight - and caught the younger lieutenant's gaze, receiving a questioning stare in reply. Derek nodded at Davenport's assault rifle held between his knees and then tilted his head towards the cockpit. Davenport got the message and nodded, and the pair of them got up to their feet and strolled lazily towards the front of the aircraft, weapons in hand. Derek made it first to the cockpit and stood between the two pilots. He put on a headset so he could speak to the pilots above the roar of the whirring engines above them.

"We gotta turn west towards California," Derek tapped the pilot on the shoulder as he spoke.

"Not gonna happen," the pilot replied. "We've got a preset flight plan to follow; any deviation will either burn up too much fuel or get us shot down."

"We insist," Davenport shouted loudly as he raised his weapon, compensating for not having a headset on. Derek shouldered his own HK-G36 at the pilot's chest.

 _"Please,_  lieutenant," the pilot rolled his eyes, not impressed in the least at their half-assed, ill-thought-through hijacking attempt. After Bedell had been hijacked he wasn't the least bit surprised. These 4th Infantry boys had a couple screws loose. "You kill us and who's gonna fly this bird,  _you?"_

"I never said 'kill'," Derek replied, pointing his HK-G36's barrel at the pilot's legs. "But a bullet through the kneecap's gotta hurt. You wanna limp for the rest of your life?"

"Tango Three to Tango Lead; we have a situation here," the pilot calmly spoke into his radio.

Derek shifted his aim to the radio console and fired a single round, shattering the aircraft's radio console in a shower of sparks and broken plastic.  _"Are you crazy?"_ the co-pilot screamed at him.

"Pretty much," Davenport answered before Derek could say anything. "Turn west and head for LA."

"That's suicide," the pilot protested. "I'm not flying through there; that's Skynet central."

"What's going on up there?" a corporal shouted from the rear as he got up to see what all the noise was about. Charley and Ellison stayed in place; Derek had told them he and Davenport would take care of this part, knowing that Charley wasn't the forceful type and Ellison had issues with hijacking a helicopter at gunpoint.

"We're taking a detour," Derek turned back towards the rear cabin to address everyone else while Davenport kept an eye on the pilots. "The Tin Can's found Connor; he's alive and being held in a work camp in Century City, in LA. We're going after him. Anyone have an issue with that, speak up now."

The soldiers looked at each other and murmured to one another in hushed conversation – as hushed as was possible in the back of a noisy aircraft, at least. Derek had picked these soldiers because some of them had been there in Fort Carson when John had saved their asses and taken command, and  _all_  of them had fought at Area 51 with John.

Corporal Fast, one of the survivors from Perry's ill-fated attack on Schriever AFB - stepped forward towards Derek, and nodded once. "We're with you, sir." The other soldiers murmured their assent and nodded almost in unison. Derek couldn't help but feel a little touched that they'd all agreed to risk their lives for John; maybe they were sick of constantly losing to Skynet, as they had since he'd been missing. Maybe they weren't that fond of Perry.

Whatever the reason, they were onside and willing to put themselves on the line for his nephew. He felt a sense of pride in John, too, that at such a young age he already commanded that kind of respect and loyalty from his men, even in his absence. Maybe  _especially_  in his absence, Derek thought. Since John had left things had gone from bad to worse; maybe they'd have still lost Cheyenne Mountain eventually, even if he'd been there, but that's not how a lot of them saw it. Even Perry himself had admitted that he'd rather be taking orders now than giving them. He'd had a taste of being the head honcho in this war and didn't like it one bit.

"We're all agreed, then," Davenport called out from the cockpit, still pointing his rifle at the pilots. "Turn west, head for Century; we're going to get Connor."

 _"Fine,"_ the pilot sighed, seeing he had no other choice. He pushed the control stick to the right and the Chinook veered out of formation and flew west. "You guys are fucking crazy," he muttered under his breath. Flying into California on a wing and a prayer to save a general gone MIA was just sheer insanity.

* * *

Another lone helicopter – a Seahawk – flew out over the sea, so low the waves could almost reach up and touch the bottom of the aircraft's hull. The pilot handled the Seahawk with dexterity and skill that was beyond any human being, keeping the helicopter no more than twenty feet above sea level as they approached the mammoth form of the USS  _Nimitz._

Cameron turned her head to look at John, slumped in the co-pilot's seat next to her, his head lolling lazily to one side. She stuck out one hand and placed her palm gently over his neck, feeling his shallow breathing and slow pulse. The three-mile walk to the helicopter had exhausted John; he'd tripped and stumbled forty-nine times on the way back and she'd had to help him to his feet for the last sixteen. He'd been barely able to stand when they'd arrived and she'd had to lift him into the cockpit and buckle his seatbelt for him. She was worried the antibiotics weren't going to be effective, that infection was already setting in. She felt hurt, seeing John in his current condition.

 _"USS_ Nimitz  _to approaching aircraft; identify yourself."_

"Martin Bedell," Cameron answered the radio message in the late lieutenant's voice. "Requesting permission to land."

 _"No names over the radio, lieutenant!"_ After a pause the operator on the carrier continued.  _"Permission to land granted, welcome home."_

John groaned and opened his eyes, lifted his head up, despite his exhaustion and turned his head to face Cameron. "How'd you learn to fly, anyway?"

"I watched Martin Bedell," Cameron replied, expertly handling the controls as if she'd flown for years. She didn't find it very difficult and she found it strange that humans often took two years to learn how to fly; it had taken her only hours of observation to master flight. Humans were very inefficient.

As the carrier grew larger in the windshield Cameron pulled up on the control stick, then eased the Seahawk gently down onto the deck. Aircraft technicians rushed towards them, followed up by a pair of marines and an officer wearing captain's insignia. Cameron shut off the engine and kept her SCAR-H in hand as she opened her door and stepped out. John managed to push his door open but collapsed onto the flight deck as he stepped outside. He was so weak his legs couldn't keep him up. Cameron rushed around the front of the helicopter and lifted him to his feet. She pulled his arm over her shoulder and he instinctively leaned onto her.

"Who the hell are you?" Captain Wallace asked, frowning deeply. It was his bird, he recognised the stencilled insignia as Bedell's Seahawk, but there was no Bedell and the two people in front of him were complete strangers. "Where's Bedell, and where are the other choppers we sent out?" He had a sinking feeling he wasn't going to like the answer. Had he sent his pilots to their deaths on the mission to Colorado?

"This is John Connor, he needs medical attention," Cameron said. She wrapped one arm tightly around his waist to keep him balanced upright.

"'John Connor': yeah, right; and I'm Santa Claus," Wallace rolled his eyes. Who the hell did this kid think he was? "How did you get hold of this helicopter?" Wallace demanded.

"I stole it," Cameron answered honestly. "Martin Bedell flew me to Century City to rescue John."

"And Bedell is... where?"

John lowered his head in guilt. "He died covering us, I'm sorry." He really was, too. What made it worse was that it had happened before: Judgement Day had happened on the exact same date as in the future timeline, Cameron had told him before that he'd been imprisoned in Century Work Camp, and Derek had told him that Martin Bedell had died rescuing him from captivity; was everything destined to repeat itself?

"John needs medical attention," Cameron repeated firmly. He needed rest and somewhere safe and clean to recover and she'd see to it that he received exactly that.

Wallace looked John up and down and saw the kid was a complete state; he was thin as a beanpole, with pale, pasty skin covered in bruises and lacerations, and although the wound dressings that covered his face, neck and chest concealed whatever had happened to him, the fact that so much of him was covered up, that he was barely able stand on his own feet and he leaned heavily on the girl for support indicated he'd been through something heavy. "Get them to the infirmary," he barked at his sailors. He didn't know who the hell they really were but he felt compelled to at least get the kid patched up. "You two are to be escorted at all times, understand? You're welcome to stay on my ship but that's the limit of my hospitality."

Within moments a pair of medics emerged from the carrier island with a stretcher between them. Cameron carefully lowered him onto it and stayed at his side as the medics lifted up the stretcher and marched him off the flight deck and inside the ship. She kept pace with them as they made their way through the bowels of the carrier, down a long series of bare corridors, over metal floors and under lengths of steel pipes that hung from the ceiling, and down a utilitarian metal staircase. The interior of the carrier seemed very familiar to Cameron; they were almost identical to what she'd seen in the Allison Young flashbacks she'd experienced three years ago.

They reached the infirmary and the medics lifted John's stretcher onto a bed. A doctor entered from another room and the medics left them alone, though Cameron noticed that a pair of marines guarded the entrance to the ship's medical bay.

"What the hell happened to him?" the doctor asked; mouth agape at the sight of John.

"He was tortured," Cameron replied. She saw the nametag on his coat, it read  _Redman._

"John, is it?" Redman asked, receiving a nod from Cameron he carried on. "How did they torture you, John?"

"Electricity, boiling bleach, beatings..."

"I get it. What have you given him?" he asked Cameron.

"One injection each of morphine and penicillin," Cameron replied.

Redman nodded; impressed that such a young girl would know so much about treating injuries. "Good job; where'd you learn how to place dressings like this, too?" She'd done it even better than most field medics he'd known.

"I have detailed files," Cameron said. The doctor shrugged it off, having no clue what she was talking about;  _she must have been a med student or something before the war_. He peeled off the dressings she'd so carefully applied to his burns, took a pair of surgical steel scissors and cut through the middle of his sweater, down John's sleeves and trouser legs, and peeled the clothing off, rendering John naked on the table.

"Jesus!" Redman gasped at what he saw, and Cameron's eyes widened at the full extent of his injuries. The sadness and hurt she felt for John was more acute as she recognised the obvious signs that he'd been tortured even worse than she'd thought. Besides the chemical burns from the boiling bleach she also saw electrical burns on his thighs, stomach, chest, and his groin. His testicles were twice their normal size and were completely covered in red burn marks and purple bruising that matched those blotched across most of his torso.

John had seen it all before during his torture; they'd left him naked on the bed so he'd had plenty of time to see the bruises and swelling start to form.

There wasn't much they could do in the immediate sense, Redman realised. Cameron had done everything necessary prior to arriving on the ship; he saw no signs of debris in the wounds, nothing to indicate infection, though he wasn't going to take the chance. He took a pair of syringes and stuck them one after another into John's arm, pushing their liquid contents into his veins to course through his body. "Antibiotics and sedatives are about all I can do for now," he told Cameron. "No broken bones, no permanent injuries – apart from the chemical burns; they'll probably scar for life. I'll start him on an IV, too. We'll probably want to give him a bath before we redress his wounds. You'll live," he slapped a hand onto John's left shoulder – one of the few places not covered with bruises, burns, or cuts. "And chicks dig scars," he winked at John as he left to attend to another patient.

John felt himself getting drowsy as the drugs surged through his veins and started to take effect. He couldn't keep his head up anymore and his eyes felt just as heavy. He closed his eyes and managed to reach out for Cameron's hand. She held hers out to him and he interlaced his fingers with hers, weakly squeezing them and feeling some comfort from her touch. "Do youdig scars, Cameron?"

"No," she replied. She didn't find anything appealing or unappealing about scar tissue; she didn't understand why some human women did. Her love for John wasn't based on any physical aspect of his appearance. She saw a slight look of disappointment on John's face and realised that wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear. "Dig  _you,"_  she smiled and squeezed his hand to reassure him.

John smiled back as Cameron's beautiful, glowing face blurred from view and his eyes closed as the sedative kicked in and he drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless slumber.

Cameron held John's hand for a few moments longer as his pulse and blood pressure dropped, and she heard his breathing slow into a shallow, relaxed rhythm. She let go and stepped out of the infirmary, heading towards the carrier's showers. She marched into the men's shower room, finding the room vacant. She opened up a cabinet and extracted scissors, a razor, and shaving gel, and headed back towards the infirmary and John. He needed a shave; the wounds on his face and neck would be much easier to dress and keep clean without long strands of facial hair in the way.

She worked quickly and efficiently, cutting John's beard first with the scissors; trimming it down to little more than stubble and then shaving his face clean, working with precision only a machine could employ to ensure she didn't touch any of his burns. Once his beard and his hair were neat and trim she treated his burns once again, gently yet meticulously clearing each one and ensuring they were clean before she applied a third round of dressings and taped them over his face, neck, and chest.

When she was done she sat at his side and held his hand in hers, constantly analysing his vital signs for any change she needed to be aware of, though the simple physical contact brought her pleasure. She'd spent so long away from John, worried for his safety and wellbeing so much she'd not considered what it would be like to simply hold his hand again. She'd stay at his side until he woke up, and remain there for as long as she could. After knowing for six months and fourteen days what it was like to not have John, she never wanted to experience that again.

* * *

_"Captain Wallace; Tangos Three and Four are inbound, five miles out, and requesting permission to land."_

Wallace groaned at the intercom as he pulled himself out of bed; the six hours' sleep he'd allowed himself since the two unwelcome newcomers had arrived on his boat had gone by like it was only ten minutes. "Let 'em land; I'll greet them up top." He walked over to the sink in his cabin and ran the cold tap, splashing water on his face to wake himself up. He hoped this landing would be less eventful than the last; he didn't need any more uninvited guests on his ship.

Somewhat awake, he left the comfort of his private quarters and marched through the corridors, up several flights of stairs and made his way up to the fight deck, stepping out into the freezing wind that had started blowing sometime after he'd gone to bed, and found himself wishing he'd put on a coat or jacket to keep the cold out. It was easily below zero; similar to Alaska in temperature. This wasn't a normal winter, he knew. Not for the Californian coast.

He watched the two Chinooks descend onto the flight deck and marched towards them as the rear hatches opened up. Soldiers flowed out of the back and plodded onto the deck – with the exception of the twelve marines who strode out towards the nearest elevator - then lined up in three ranks on the command of a tall black officer he guessed must be Perry.

"Colonel Perry," Wallace strolled towards him and offered his hand, surprised by the army officer's strong grip. The man looked strained, stressed, and needed not only a good rest but also a strong drink or three. He'd never seen anyone wound up so tightly, though given their circumstances he guessed he could hardly blame the man.

"Captain Wallace, thanks for having us," Perry smiled, finally feeling completely relieved after being under threat of being exterminated for months on end. They were finally safe now; had a place to call home where they couldn't be surrounded and smashed flat by the machines. He looked around and saw only five F/A-18D fighters on the deck, and wondered what the hell Skynet had thrown at them that had whittled down so many aircraft. These guys were just as battered as his own unit, but at least they could up sticks and move to a safer place when the need arose.

"I sent out four aircraft to pick you up, Colonel; what the hell happened? I know about the Seahawk, where's the other Chinook?"

"I don't know," Perry replied. "The pilot said they had a situation and then veered off course." The fact that the machine had taken the Seahawk and then the aircraft carrying Baum, Davenport, Ellison and Dixon went off course towards California gave him a pretty strong inkling of what where it had gone.

"We'll talk about that later. There's plenty of space in the hangars, Perry. We've set up cots and impromptu living areas down there; not like we need much space for aircraft anymore. It's not that comfy but it's the best we've got. There's food in the mess hall; tinned supplies mostly, but we've got plenty of fresh fish."

"Sounds good to me," Perry nodded. He wasn't much of a fish person but after eating one or two ration tins a day for so long any food – especially fresh – was welcome.

"There's something I need you to do first, Colonel," Wallace said as they stepped through a bulkhead door and into the carrier's interior. "One of our Seahawks landed earlier and a young man and woman came out." He led the way down to the infirmary as Perry thought hard about what he said; the tin can had come back to the carrier? He'd expected her to go back to Skynet. If she was here then there was a damn good chance the whole crew was in danger.

They stepped into the infirmary and Perry could barely believe his eyes. Sat up on a bed, covered in dressings and looking like he'd taken on Mike Tyson and come last, was...

 _"Connor?"_  Perry's jaw dropped slightly in shock at the sight of the kid sat in bed, drinking water through a straw in a clear plastic glass. "We thought you were dead, where the hell have you been?"

"Prison," John replied, his throat aching as he spoke. He took a long sip from the straw and gulped the water down, closing his eyes as the cool liquid ran down his throat and helped to ease the raw, dry feeling that reminded him of several bad hangovers he'd had in the past. "We just broke out."

 _"We?"_ Perry asked. "You mean-"

"Cameron," John interrupted. "She broke me out and we escaped."

 _I'll be a monkey's bare-assed uncle,_  Perry clenched his jaw. The machine had told them the truth. So it wasn't working for Skynet –  _yet._  He still thought the AI could one day take control of it, and then Cameron would be its deadliest weapon. He wouldn't trust it as far as he could throw it.

Wallace turned towards Perry and interrupted his misgivings about the machine. "You know this kid?"

"This is General Connor," Perry replied.

"You're kidding me, right?" Wallace laughed mirthlessly. They were playing a damn prank on him; did they think this was funny?

"No, he really is Connor."

"I said he was John Connor," Cameron entered the room carrying a steaming plate of food and placed it on a tray next to John's bed. "He didn't believe me."

"What is it?" John beamed a smile at her and sat upright, ignoring Perry and Wallace stood at the foot of his bed.

"Fresh cod, fried noodles, carrots, peas, bean sprouts, and broccoli," Cameron replied. She'd left John to get him some food when he'd woken up and told her he was hungry.

 _"Fresh_  cod?" John asked. He hadn't eaten any fresh food since they'd raided the refrigerators in Fort Carson – human-meat broth in Century notwithstanding, and he just wanted to forget about that. He picked up the knife and fork Cameron had given him and started to dig in. The taste of the fresh, salty cod was almost pure bliss, complemented by the fried noodles and vegetables. Despite the pain he was in heaven right now.

"We catch fish to supplement our supplies," Wallace replied.

"The drop in temperature after Judgement Day caused north-dwelling fish species to migrate south," Cameron supplied. One of the few foods that had been plentiful in the previous timeline had been fish; the difficulty had been managing to safely catch large enough quantities to feed the resistance soldiers whilst avoiding machine patrols. Skynet had deposited hydrobots along the coast to attack fishing parties when it learned of the increased marine stocks.

"Back on topic," Wallace snapped. "You seriously expect me to believe that General Connor is a kid?" He lost Martin Bedell – one of his best pilots – and two choppers for a mission to rescue this  _child?_

"John's not 'a kid'", Cameron replied. "He's twenty-one." Cameron didn't understand why humans emphasised age regarding status. Humans learnt from experience, not age. John had more experience fighting machines than anyone else alive, with the exception of Derek Reese, and he knew Skynet better than Derek did.

"I  _am_  John Connor," John stared coldly at Wallace. "I was at Presidio Alto with Martin Bedell, class of 2008. The crazy man who attacked him was a machine, like Cameron. I got it to chase me and we lured it into a tar pit and blew its head off. The thing he liked most about the academy was running cross country every day. That enough for you?" Wallace stood there, gobsmacked at his revelations. John could see that he'd struck a chord with the captain, saw he was mulling it over, and pressed his advantage before doubt crept back into Wallace's mind. "I saved his life that day and he just died saving mine. If you want him to have died for nothing then don't believe me."

"I always assumed Connor was in charge of the academy," Wallace muttered.

"Did he  _say_  Connor ran the academy?" John pressed further.

"No," Wallace admitted. He'd always just assumed that was the case. The kid knew about Bedell; he knew  _a lot_  about Martin Bedell. "I need to think about this," he told them. He turned around and left the infirmary, not sure what to think anymore.

"You going to tell me what happened to you?" Perry asked John once Wallace had left.

"Pretty much whatever Cameron told you," John replied.

"Connor-"

"I told you before, Perry; I trust Cameron with my life. You should too." John doubted it'd ever happen but he still hoped. It'd make his life easier if people learned to accept Cameron, and he'd work as hard as he could to make sure one day they did. Suddenly a thought just struck him; something he hadn't thought of until just now. "Where's Derek?"

"California, probably," Perry replied. "That's where they took the chopper when they split up from the rest of us. Looking for you, I'd say."

"Crap!" John looked to Cameron and then to Perry. They'd gone to rescue him and they were too late, heading straight towards a Skynet stronghold. "Perry, try to reach them tell them to come back." Perry saluted once and left the room for the bridge, leaving John and Cameron alone again.

"We've gotta go get them," he told her, starting to pull himself out of bed.

Cameron gently but firmly pushed him back down; he was no match for her strength and she held him in place easily. "You're still hurt." She wasn't going to let John go anywhere until he'd recovered, and even then she was averse to risk losing him again. "Perry will find them." She picked up his fork and scooped up a chunk of white, flaky cod wrapped in brown fried noodles and pushed it into John's mouth. He accepted it and chewed thoughtfully on the tasty fish, worrying about Derek, Charley, and the others. So many people had tried to save him; he wouldn't let them die for their troubles.

"The  _Nimitz_  has advanced radar," Cameron told him. "They can track the helicopter if it flies in range. They'll see it." Cameron sat down on the narrow bed and wedged herself beside John, enjoying the close contact once more as she kept one leg on the floor to maintain balance. "Trust me," she told John.

John wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in closer, then pressed his lips against her forehead. Now they weren't worried about immediate survival, if he kissed her on the lips he didn't know if he'd be able to stop himself going any further, and this wasn't their quarters in Cheyenne Mountain; anyone could walk in on them at any time. Even if they had total privacy, after the shock treatment they'd done on his balls he wouldn't be in the mood for quite some time. Instead he contented himself to just snuggling up to her. That was enough for now. "I always do," he murmured. And he did trust her; she was right, he was in no state to help anyone right now. He'd do as she said and allow Perry to find and try to guide Derek and the others back; for now, at least.

* * *

"How long?" Derek leaned in and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. They'd been flying for some time now, trying to fly a longer route around the more barren, remote areas of California to try and reach Century through what they hoped would be the path of least resistance.

"We're just past Palm Springs," the pilot said back to him. They still weren't too happy about being hijacked at gunpoint but once Derek had explained to them they were going to rescue John Connor they'd calmed down somewhat. They still weren't happy, but they were willing to take the risk. "Just over an hour if we fly around LA County; then we gotta find a safe landing zone."

"How'd you know he's alive?" The co-pilot asked.

"Tin Can told me," Derek said, forgetting the crew of the  _Nimitz_  didn't have a clue about Cameron. Well, they would soon enough, he thought. He looked back and saw the squad. Most were doing what soldiers always did when they had the chance; sleeping. Those who couldn't sleep checked chambers, unloaded and reloaded magazines, and blew imaginary dust out of working parts and feed trays. Derek had never had a problem sleeping; years of living as a soldier in the future meant he could drop whenever and wherever he wanted, and the harsh, unpredictable nature of his own time had dictated that he be a light sleeper. He rarely ever took time stirring; he could go from seemingly comatose to ready for action in no time flat.

Derek moved into the back of the aircraft and watched the men under his command, illuminated by the green glow of dozens of cyalume sticks placed all over the walls, floor, and ceiling. He watched as Charley checked his medical pack for the umpteenth time – the only one other than Ellison who wasn't concentrated on his weapon.

"Hopefully he won't need that," Derek said as he sat down opposite the medic.

"I'm hoping he  _does,"_ Charley countered. When he saw Derek's confused expression he elaborated. "He's been held there for six months; from what you told me about your brother's time in Century, John's gonna be in rough shape. Only way he won't need treatment is if we carry him out feet first." Derek hadn't thought of it like that but Charley was right. Kyle had been stuck in Century for two years alongside Future-John – who'd been there for six – and they'd both been little more than walking skeletons when they'd escaped.

"Hopefully he'll just need the Tylenol," Davenport chipped in. "That and a hot shower, hot meal, a hot toddy..."

Derek didn't listen to the rest. Ellison caught his attention, unconsciously fingering the cross hanging from his neck. He wasn't saying anything but Derek could easily guess what he was up to. "Say one from me," Derek kicked his boot to get Ellison's attention. He wasn't one for religion himself, but the hell with it, he thought; whatever helped.

Derek decided to 'rest his eyelids' for a moment, to catch up on the severe lack of sleep they'd all suffered from in recent weeks. He felt hot and drowsy, and just needed to close his eyes for a moment...

A klaxon wailed loudly and violently tore him from his slumber. Derek jumped up from his seat, instantly awake and found himself in the middle of a frenzied panic in the cabin. Screaming and shouting erupted all around him but he ignored it and surged to the cockpit once more.

"What's going on?" he shouted out, having forgotten to don the headset on this occasion.

"Aircraft on our tail," the pilot yelled back and pulled the control stick left, banking the Chinook sharply to one side as he tried to evade. "They're locked on!"

 _Shit!_  Derek didn't know what to do. On the ground he could defend himself at least; but in the air, stuck in a flying tin can being shot at by _another_  flying tin can; there was nothing he could do.

"Missile inbound!" the pilot screamed and twisted the helicopter sickeningly to the right, throwing everyone in the back around like rag dolls. "Deploying flares!" Derek heard faint  _pops_  from the back of the aircraft; flares flying out, he guessed, as the Chinook banked even harder and he clutched hard onto the back of the pilots' seats to keep himself from falling over.

The Chinook pulled hard left as an X-45 unmanned drone released a Sidewinder missile from its weapons bay. The missile's rear flashed brilliantly as the rocket motor engaged and pushed it towards the helicopter, rapidly accelerating to two and a half times the speed of sound, tearing through the sky towards the much slower Chinook as flares shot out from the rear of the aircraft and ignited, burning brilliantly in the air to distract the missile from the helicopter. It homed in on one of the flares and exploded. Too close to the Chinook; debris from the blast shot forward and pelted the aft engine.

"Brace yourselves!" The co-pilot warned. Derek did just that and held on for dear life. An explosion rocked them violently and they listed to one side.

"What's going on?" Ellison called out.

"Rear engine's hit. We're going down; brace for crash-landing," the pilot struggled at the controls, keeping them as level as he could as the Chinook dropped towards the ground. The soldiers all bent over and put their heads between their knees, bracing themselves.

They hit the ground hard, throwing everyone in the back out of their seats and into a heap in the middle as the aircraft bounced once then struck again and skidded to a stop.

Derek shook himself off and stood up. He quickly checked himself for any injuries and found nothing more than a few bruises.

"Anyone hurt?" Davenport called out. The soldiers disentangled themselves from each other and all groggily muttered they were okay. Charley got up with the med pack and went from soldier to soldier and found nothing more than a few superficial cuts and bruises. They were all in shape to carry on.

"You two alright?" Derek asked the pilots.

"No! What the hell did you think would happen; hijacking a chopper and flying through fucking Skynet territory? Of  _course_  we're not alright; we're shot down, without a radio, and in the middle of the machine capital of America!"

"Grab a gun," Derek ordered them as he pushed the button to open the rear hatch. They were all alive, reasonably okay, if a little shaken. It was a miracle nobody was hurt; he'd give credit to Ellison and his best friend upstairs for that one. The soldiers quickly piled out of the rear and took defensive positions around the downed aircraft.

"Why?" the pilot asked. "We're aircrew, not special forces."

"You are  _today,"_  Davenport grinned sarcastically and pressed an M4 carbine into each of their laps.

Derek, Davenport, and the two pilots were the last ones to leave the aircraft, and took position in the centre of the defensive circle. They were in the middle of a large, barren open space. Derek instantly recognised the posts for a football field and saw a high school a hundred yards off. They were in the middle of a huge open space full of sports fields. He took a knee and Davenport joined him as Derek took a map out of his pocket. He pointed at LA County on the map with his finger – he never marked positions on a map – something he'd learned in the future. "Where are we?" He'd fallen asleep since he'd last asked them; he had no idea where he was.

"Here," one of the pilots pointed. "Riverside."

"Century's forty-eight miles northwest," Davenport added. "Hell of a trek."

"We'd better get started, then," Derek folded up the map and slipped it into his thigh pocket. The fact the drone that had shot them down hadn't turned back to finish them all off on the ground told Derek that it was either out of weapons or only fitted with air to air missiles; either way it would have reported their location and Skynet would dispatch the nearest units to investigate. They had to be gone before the machines showed up. He raised his voice slightly so everyone in all-round defence could hear him. "We're heading northwest, bearing two-eight-zero degrees. Fast, take point. You two stay in the middle," he told the two pilots. They probably had some weapons training but as far as he was concerned they'd be a liability if they got into a fight. "Double time, no sound," he added.

One by one they moved out, keeping five metres between each man as they marched through the field towards the main road and the residential area on the other side. Derek stayed closer to the front whilst Davenport, Ellison, and Charley took the rear. Derek didn't want Davenport anywhere near him in case they were attacked; that way if one of them was hit then the other could take command. Forty-eight miles," Derek thought as he marched in silence. And that was as the crow flies; possibly more like sixty, depending on the route they took. At least the going was easy here, he thought. For  _now,_ anyway. The residential area was far from the blast sites and was more or less intact; the families were probably killed in their homes by follow-up chemical attacks. When they closed in on LA County the destruction would start to show and their route would be that much more treacherous.

* * *

Byrne stood in the crowd anxiously awaiting execution, being shepherded by the machines towards the gas chambers that bisected the camp. He'd managed to avoid being shuffled in for four days now but the machines had started to herd the people around him towards them. He'd found it ironic, even now, that what was once an ambulance garage – a structure that housed lifesaving vehicles – was being used to extinguish so many lives en masse. The architects who'd designed it would be rolling in their open, muddy graves by now, assuming they hadn't been completely vaporised by the nuclear blasts.

As far as he knew he was the only one of the original workers left in the camp. John and Slater had gone into the hospital and only John had come out – with Cameron unleashing hell on the machines as they made their escape. He doubted Johnny Boy would have abandoned Slater in the hospital so he figured his friend must be dead. Jim, Natalie; every single worker who'd joined in John's plan to blast their way out of the camp had been condemned and moved into the other half of the camp. He'd managed to carefully avoid being slaughtered in the gas chambers with some clever manoeuvring through the crowds but everyone else he'd met in the camp was now gone.

Children wept and cried, women tried to comfort them, and old men stared gravely in acceptance of their fate as they neared the chamber. They shuffled forwards and Byrne found himself swept with them, unable to escape the tightly cramped crowd. A T-70 stood close by and pushed them towards their doom. The gas chamber was packed tightly like a sardine tin and Byrne wondered how he and those around him would even fit inside, not that the machines cared about their comfort, and not that heor anyone else would even care in a few moments when the gas seared their lungs and poisoned them to death.

The human wave stopped moving and the doors descended only three feet from Byrne, sealing shut and giving him perhaps a few moments' reprieve.

In a matter of seconds the fearful screaming started, followed by loud bangs on the doors as people tried to break their way out of the gas chambers. Byrne wouldn't have had a problem admitting to anyone he was scared shitless right now; if it hadn't been for his training he knew he'd probably be out of his mind in fear. The screaming was slowly replaced with coughing, retching, and cries of agony as the gas took effect and burned their lungs inside their chests. He heard splashes on the ground inside as several people would have thrown up, pissed, or shat themselves in their final moments as they lost control of their bodies.

"Sod that," Byrne muttered and clutched the remaining hand grenade John's girlfriend had given him. He wasn't going to die pissing himself and struggling for breath on the floor while his lungs burnt away. When it was his turn next and the doors closed and the gas poured in he'd take care of himself and everyone else in the chamber with him. He'd pull the pin and make it quick and painless for all of them.  _Who knows?_ He thought;  _if I'm lucky it might even fuck up the gas chamber._

Something clamped down on Byrne's right arm and he growled in pain as metallic fingers tightly gripped his bicep and dragged him backwards through the crowd. "Easy!" he shouted at the machine, though it gave no sign of hearing or understanding him as it pulled him away. Once he was away from the crowd by the gas chamber the machine dropped him to the floor. "Jaysus!" he growled, clutching protectively at the muscles in his arm; purple bruises already started to appear where its fingers had dug in.

The machine grabbed his wrist and held it out up in the air, ignoring Byrne's obvious discomfort as it scanned the barcode tattoo on his wrist. Byrne stared at it in confusion; he had no idea what the hell it wanted from him. The T-70 forced him upright and held him securely by his wrist as it marched him towards a waiting Osprey in the corner of the camp, away from the gas chamber and the hospital on the other side. It shoved him towards the open rear hatch and Byrne got the message as it raised its gun arm at him. "If ye shoot me it's just gonna blow away the Osprey." The machine stared at him and its only reaction was to take a step forward. "Not that yer clever enough to think of that, tin can."

He stepped up the ramp and into the rear cabin, and sat down among a dozen other prisoners as the hatch sealed shut behind him. "Ye know what's going on?" he asked a tall, pale, heavyset man wearing jeans and a torn black sweater.

"No idea," he replied. "Taking us somewhere."

 _I couldn't have figured_ that _out on my own,_ Byrne rolled his eyes at the man's comment.

The engines whined louder and louder as the rotors started to spin, building enough lift to raise the aircraft into the air as they started their ascent. Byrne started to wonder where they were being taken; perhaps to another camp elsewhere.

 _Or maybe not,_  he thought as they started to descend again only a matter of seconds after taking off.  _What the hell's going on?_  As soon as the aircraft touched the ground the rear hatch opened and they shuffled outside. Byrne couldn't believe it; they were outside the fence. They'd literally flown up and then back down a hundred-and-fifty metres outside the camp perimeter.

"They're letting us go?" someone asked.

"Not a chance," Byrne replied. There were a dozen of them from the back of the Osprey and he saw eight machines stood around, facing inwards, spaced out with plenty of room between them. "Don't run," he warned the others. It had all the illusions of freedom but if they tried to leg it they wouldn't make it six feet.

"What's going on?"

One of the machines led them towards a pile of shovels on the ground, next to steel poles and rolls of wire mesh. Byrne looked out and noticed large concrete stakes in the ground, ten feet tall and a foot thick. He saw three of them spaced out with fifty metres between each one, and he figured there were more that he couldn't see. Next to each stake was more wire mesh and razor wire.  _Where the hell did they get this from?_  It didn't take him long to work out what the machines wanted.

"They want us to put up fences," he told them.

"Why?" the man he'd sat next to on his brief Osprey ride asked.

"Extending the camp would be my guess," someone else replied. Byrne decided to cut the chatter before the machines blew them all away and picked a dozen other guys to take their place. Expanding the camp made sense to him, though. The machines wanted to kill everyone so they'd obviously try to make it more efficient. It galled him to be helping the machines kill more people, though. In the camp they'd just hauled around dead bodies; it hadn't really helped Skynet's war effort – more like clearing up after its mess, and only doing it because scavenging things off the dead would have helped them escape.

He picked up a shovel and started digging into the muddy ground. In short order he'd dug a hole ten metres to the left of one of the right concrete post, then another worker stuck in a ten-foot pole and held it upright while Byrne filled in the ground around it.

"Maybe we should do the crappiest job imaginable," the man helping him suggested. "Make it easy to escape?"

"Nah; I'd rather not risk it," Byrne replied. He had another idea, anyway. He fingered the hand grenade in his pocket; he'd plant it along with one of the poles and try to work a line to the pin so he could pull it from a distance. It'd take some time before he could, though; he wanted to make sure he planted it in a place where it'd blow the biggest hole possible in the fence, that he could get to easily enough. John had clearly brushed off on him, he realised.

He looked out into the city, staring out into the vast metropolis that surrounded them. John had escaped out there somewhere, or so he hoped. He'd seen the HK that had chased after them, watched it get shot down and crashed. He could even see the wreckage of the shattered drone strewn along the ground behind the smashed remains of a semi-truck's trailer about two hundred metres away. He heard a muffled cry in the distance and stared out towards the trailer, searching with keen eyes for anything out there. Movement caught his gaze out of the rubble pile as he compacted more dirt around the post. Byrne stopped and stared intently, his keen eyes scanning for something else.

He caught the something moving out there, beside the trailer. What looked like a person snatched up something and was gone a split second later. That left no doubt in Byrne's mind; someone was out there watching the camp, but who?

* * *

Martin Bedell opened his eyes and groaned. He hurt everywhere; he felt like he'd been hit by a freight train, and then he saw a flaming cylindrical jet engine a few feet away and remembered what he'd  _actually_  been hit by, or  _almost,_ anyway _._  How the hell he wasn't dead he had no idea, but he was just grateful to whatever powers that be that he wasn't. He remembered running from the HK, falling down, feeling it soar inches above his head and then a hot flash of fire in front of him. He tried to sit up and intense pain shot through both his legs, tearing through the flesh, sinew and nerve like a red-hot knife stuck into him. He cried out in pain, lifted his head up and looked down his body to his legs. He didn't need to be a doctor to tell they were both broken. One bent at an odd ankle and the jagged white bone of his shin stuck out the other. His jumpsuit was tattered and burnt, along with portions of his skin, and he was covered in lacerations from shrapnel thrown out by the explosion.

He fought the urge to scream again, knowing the machines would come down on him like a ton of bricks if he did. He gritted his teeth and pushed down on the ground with his hands, growling through the bones poking into his flesh as he pushed himself into a sitting position. He breathed deeply to try and control the pain and ignore the throbbing above his knees. He pulled out a small radio from his pocket, now battered and cracked, and held it up to his mouth.

"Cameron, Connor, this is Bedell; come in." No reply, just static. He tried it again and got nothing, then switched frequency to a channel the _Nimitz_  used. " _Nimitz,_  this is Martin Bedell, do you read?" Again, nothing. He tossed the radio and sighed; it must have been damaged when he'd been caught in the crash. Half of his jumpsuit was torn and shredded – just like his legs – and his skin stung where it had been singed and cut by burning debris. He took his helmet off to try and cool himself down – not thinking that the temperature was slightly below zero and the heat was just shock – and saw a large crack that stretched from front to back, almost bisecting it.  _If I hadn't been wearing it..._  he didn't even want to finish that train of thought.

Not that it mattered much, he realised. He was stuck out in the middle of Century City, barely a few hundred metres from the work camp, and both his legs were broken. Nobody knew where he was or that he was even still alive, and nobody would come to his rescue. He had a feeling even if they knew he was still kicking, Cameron wouldn't let John go. And rightly so, he thought. He'd swapped a quick fiery death for a slow one; he didn't have any food or water on him, so at best he had about three days before he died of thirst.  _Least it won't be for nothing,_  he thought. If Connor saves the world like his uncle said, then he guessed at least he'd have at least played some small part in it. They'd never told him what had happened to him in the future; now he guessed he knew why not.

The rumbling of nearby treads echoed through the city and Bedell snapped, instantly alert. He pressed his palms on the ground and pulled himself backwards towards the remains of the semi truck he'd sniped from. It took him a monumental effort and several minutes of tearing, agonising pain in his legs as he dragged himself backwards on his ass and into the remnants of the trailer, which had been almost cut in half by the HK clipping it. He pulled himself into the shelter of the trailer and saw the grey, dented form of his M82 Barrett laid on in front of the trailer. He reached out – and damn if that didn't hurt too – grabbed hold of the weapon by the barrel, and dragged it towards him. He could tell instantly the rifle was useless; the barrel was as crooked as a politician, one of the bipod legs was missing, and the cocking handle had snapped clean off.

The sights looked okay to him, though. He disconnected the scope, poked his head out of the trailer and towards the camp to take a look. He saw a group of prisoners with shovels and poles working outside the perimeter wire, under heavy machine guard. Looked like they were building an extension, he thought. He leaned as far out of the trailer as he dared and held the scope up to one of his eyes. In the distance he saw a convoy of three T-2s rumbling towards the work camp. "Explains the treads I heard," he muttered.

Minutes later he heard more movement and poked out the other side of the trailer, the way he'd come in from, and saw T-1s and T-70s moving together. He stayed inside the trailer, as still as he could, and didn't even dare to breathe as they approached. He gave it a minute and waited until they'd passed him before he slowly exhaled in relief and took another breath in. If they'd heard or saw him he'd be Swiss cheese by now. The machines had marched past him and, like the T-2s, were converging on the work camp.  _Reinforcements;_  and he couldn't blame Skynet for calling them in after what he and Cameron had done to their machines.

Within an hour he'd counted twenty machines that had made their way to the camp. They must be expecting trouble; there was no way they'd have that much just to guard the prisoners. They were expecting the escapees, or someone else, to return. He leaned his head against the metal wall and held the scope back up to watch the camp. He'd try to raise Connor and Cameron again in a few hours; until then he'd wait, he'd watch the camp, and he'd learn as much as he could.


	30. Back Into The Fray

Davenport marched down a back alley, his rifle raised to his shoulder, his eyes wide open and alert as he silently made his way down the narrow passageway in the middle of a city block. Behind him was a four-man fire team consisting of Charley, Privates Anders and McAllister. The other fire team under his command stalked quietly down the middle of the next block over, and the two halves of Derek's squad were making their way down even more alleyways, keeping a wide search pattern and sticking to the narrower channels that bisected the city blocks rather than the roads that ran between them. If a T-2 came on their position its arcs of fire would be severely limited and they could recess into the gaps between the tall buildings and fire rockets and grenades from the side with near impunity.

They'd marched for three days after they'd crashed, pepper-potting and advancing by fire teams in near total silence, only stopping for a few hours at a time to rest, and never staying out in the open for longer than absolutely necessary. Davenport could barely believe the sheer concentration of machines in LA County; it seemed like every few minutes they'd had to stop and hide from a machine patrol. Air patrols were almost constant, and since they'd set out marching Davenport had permanently heard the whine of jet engines somewhere in the distance as HKs scoured the ruined city for signs of human life.

Davenport reached the end of the block and crouched down on one knee with his rifle shouldered. McAllister took up position on the other side of the alley and covered the left as Davenport did the same with the right. Anders turned around to cover their rear and Davenport gestured Charley to move forward and cross the road to the other block while the rest covered him. Charley nodded nervously. They'd done this over a hundred times since they'd set out on foot and it never got any easier; they couldn't hear any tracks or footsteps but that didn't mean there weren't any machines stood idle or in position to pick them off on the main road. Almost as bad as the tin cans were other people; gangs of civilians who might attack them for their weapons; they were equipped well enough to take them on just fine but any exchange of fire would bring the machines down on them. They wanted to reach Connor as a rescue force, not a ragtag, withered force exhausted from fighting a running battle. They were no good to anyone like that.

Charley dashed across the road, pumping his legs as fast as he could, and all but threw himself against the gap between two clothing stores. He sighed in relief that nothing had shot at him; he was the only medic in the group and if he was shot, he'd be screwed and nobody would be there to take care of John when they found him. None of them had said it but they all suspected John would need medical attention when they got to him. He beckoned the others across and McAllister and Anders crossed, followed finally by Davenport. They continued their march down the next back alley that ran down the centre of the block, eyes and ears peeled for any movement.

Tank treads crunched over nearby ground and caused them all to pause. It was on the other side of the block, only a hundred metres or so from them. Anders and McAllister took up positions as Davenport crouched on the ground and Charley knelt down opposite him. Davenport took out a street map of LA County they'd found in a corner store – deciding a more detailed map of the city layout and the streets would be invaluable in finding the camp - and flattened it out on the ground.

"We're here," Davenport pointed to a city block on the map, close to the hospital. They'd be able to see the grounds as they reached the other side of the block. "Hospital's in open ground five hundred metres from the other side of this block."

"Let's hurry up and get there," Charley nodded as Davenport put the map away.

The rest of the trek through the block was uneventful and took little more than a minute before they reached the other side. Davenport led the way out of the block and they split into pairs as they moved out onto the road, which led out onto a highway that ran between them and the hospital, in sight a few hundred metres away. The scene in front of him looked like a warzone; chunks had been blasted out of the highway, nearby buildings had been hit with what looked to Davenport like missiles, a semi-truck had been cut in half and the shattered, burnt remains of an HK lay sprawled all around it. Either it had crashed or someone got lucky and managed to bag it with a rocket launcher. Whether it was the same HK Cameron told them had damaged her, he didn't know. He had to assume it wasn't and the camp still had at least one aircraft protecting it.

"Make for the trailer," Davenport pointed at the blasted semi-truck. It offered a perfect OP on the hospital and they could summon the rest of the unit once they'd made an assessment of the camp's layout and defences. "Two-by-two advance. Move!"

In pairs they moved and covered each other; Davenport and Charley, Anders and McAllister, pepper-potting down the road, using parked and crashed cars as cover. Davenport and Charley made it to the semi and the former moved inside to check it was clear...

And found a pistol pointed at his face.

"Contact," Davenport hissed to Charley as he trained his own weapon back at the offending form. It was human, laid prone on the ground and holding a Browning 9mm at his head. The person was obviously injured; Davenport could see the congealed blood on his legs that had soaked through his burnt and torn jumpsuit. The gun shook in his hand as if he was having trouble even holding it up. Davenport lowered his own weapon, realising he'd seen the man before. "You're the Navy pilot, right; the one who flew off with Cameron?"

"Yeah. Martin Bedell," he sighed and lowered his gun to the ground, relieved that someone had come. He'd fully expected to die out here; another day or so and he knew he would have.

"Charley," Davenport hissed. Charley came inside as the other two soldiers took positions outside. "He's hurt pretty bad."

"Both my legs are broken," Bedell grunted in pain as Charley took off his pack and opened up his medical kit. "And a couple ribs, I think."

"How long ago?" Charley asked as he cut through the legs of his jumpsuit and inspected the injuries. They were clearly broken; jagged bone poked through the skin and gleamed white beneath the dried blood.

"Three days."

"We're gonna have to wait a while before we can get you out of here, buddy," Davenport said apologetically. Connor had to come first.

"Been stuck here three days; what's a little more?" Bedell shrugged.

Charley couldn't imagine being stuck for three days out in the cold with a pair of broken legs and nothing to ease the pain; he didn't even want to imagine. Charley pulled out several wound dressings and bandages, and ripped the seal on a morphine syringe. He jammed it into Bedell's thigh and pressed the plunger down, forcing the strong painkiller to course its way through his blood vessels. Bedell sighed within moments as the morphine began to take effect, already dulling the tearing pain in his legs.

"We need to set the broken bones so I can put splints on them," Charley said to Davenport. He nodded grimly in agreement. He'd played soccer for 4th Infantry – having played it throughout high school and college – and had broken his leg in one game after being the victim of a particularly nasty tackle. He knew very well just how painful a broken leg was to set. It was worse for Bedell, though; he had to go through it _twice._

Charley set to work and pulled on the lower leg, trying to force the jagged end of bone back under the skin. Bedell cried out in pain despite the morphine as the two sharp ends of bone poked and prodded the flesh of his leg. Davenport held him down and kept him steady as Bedell bucked and writhed against Charley's ministrations.

"Where's Connor?" he asked, wanting to know but also just talking to distract Bedell.

"Gone..."

"Gone where? They're dead?" The thought entered his mind and he tried to shake it off.

"Escaped..." Bedell grunted against the pain as Charley kept on manoeuvring his leg. "They got out... I covered them and shot down the HK. It crashed into me... we called it a tie."

"You look in better shape than the HK – if barely," Davenport quipped. "So what happened to Connor and Cameron after?"

"I blacked out... didn't see them. Probably made for the Seahawk..." he screamed out as Charley pulled harder on his leg and twisted. Davenport covered his mouth to stifle the sound until it died into a whimper. "Please can someone just knock me out because it's  _really_ starting to hurt," he cried, tears streaming down his face. They hadn't even set this leg yet and he couldn't go through this again with the other one. Even if they gave him a second dose of morphine it'd still be unbearable.

"I need one more thing," Davenport replied. "What's Cameron's radio set to? We need to see if she and Connor are alright."

Bedell screwed his eyes shut and grimaced, breathing in sharply. "The radio," he pointed to his broken comm. Piece on the ground beside him. "It doesn't work... but the frequency matches Cameron's."

Davenport nodded as he picked up the radio and looked at the numbers on the dials, then turned back to Bedell. "There's something else," Martin gasped out. "I kept my eyes on the hospital – nothing better to do, really – and security round the camp's doubled in the last three days; they just poured in from all over LA. I don't know why."

"Good work, buddy," Davenport said softly and held the back of Bedell's head in the palm of his hand. He drew back his arm and viciously punched Bedell's face, his fist connecting with a sharp  _slap_  of skin smacking skin as the pilot's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell loose and limp. Davenport held him steady and gently lowered his head down onto the ground as Charley looked at him in horror.

"What the  _hell_  was that?" he asked, aghast at Davenport's violent outburst.

"He asked me to," Davenport shrugged. "And we can't risk the machines hearing us if he screamed."

"You've been hanging around with Derek too much," Charley shook his head in disapproval as he carried on treating Bedell's injuries. He had to grudgingly admit it was easier without having his patient struggling to get away. Even with the morphine in his system the pain would have been unbearable.

In only a few minutes he had both of Bedell's legs straightened and the bones back in place, and splints attached to his limbs. He attached an IV drip into Bedell's arm to get some fluids back into his system and secured it in place with medical tape while Davenport switched his radio frequency to match what was on Bedell's broken com unit.

"Connor, Cameron, come in..."

* * *

John lay on the infirmary bed with Cameron sat at his side, her fingers entangled with his. John knew she was constantly scanning him as long as they were touching – checking for the slightest sign of his recovery stalling or relapsing - but he didn't care. He'd learnt a long time ago she only did it because she cared, and being honest with himself, after so long away from her he was just glad to be back together again. He'd been stuck in the infirmary for three days on doctor's orders – which Cameron told him even superseded his own, just this once.

Cameron had hardly left his side the entire time other than to bring him food and drink back from the ship's mess. He'd struggled with the food at first – his stomach being accustomed to taking in very little, had shrunk considerably – but on his second and third day he'd wolfed down every last morsel of his meals. Cameron had even brought him dessert in the form of tinned fruit. How she'd gotten it when such a thing seemed like a rare delicacy, he had no idea.

"How'd you get this?" John picked a grapefruit segment out of the tin and popped it in his mouth, savouring the sweet, juicy citrus of the fruit. After Century Work Camp every morsel of real food was going to be sheer bliss to him from now on. He thought for a moment and wondered if he really wanted to know the answer; Cameron was less than subtle and it didn't take much for him to imagine a chef laid out unconscious on the galley floor or locked in a storage closet somewhere and banging furiously on the door to get out.

"I asked the chefs," Cameron replied. She'd told them how badly injured John was and they of course had heard of his severe condition: she'd surmised that gossip and chatter were as common on board the  _Nimitz_  as it was in the bunkers in the future.

"That's it; you just  _asked_ them?"

"Yes." Cameron said. She knew people were surprised that she could be civilised when she wanted to be, and many formed the opinion she was only a killing machine and would destroy them if they stood in her way. She didn't mind; it often proved useful to her when people thought she'd harm them if they didn't do as she said. Fear was an excellent motivator, but she hadn't attempted to threaten anyone this time. "Are you surprised?" she asked.

"A little; diplomacy's not exactly your thing." He pulled her close and kissed her softly to show he meant no harm by it.

"Not yours either," Cameron replied. John usually asked first and then ignored people and did what he wanted.

"Good point," John conceded. "I guess we'd both suck at politics." He picked the last segment of grapefruit from the tin and offered it to Cameron. She accepted it and let John place it in her mouth, then chewed and swallowed it. She didn't need to eat it but John liked to share with her, so she let him.

 _"Connor, Cameron, come in? This is Davenport; do you read, over?"_ Cameron grabbed the radio as Davenport was still speaking and held it out for John. He was in command, even if Captain Wallace didn't realise yet.

"This is Connor, Davenport. I read you."

_"Jesus, boss; you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice. Where are you?"_

"In bed," John said.

_"Say again?"_

Cameron stared at John, a slight frown that John recognised as her serious face – despite most of her expressions being similar. He knew she wanted him to be serious. "We're on board the  _Nimitz,_  in the infirmary. Cameron's got me on bed-rest. Where are you?"

_"Five hundred metres outside Century Work Camp; we've got eyes on it from here."_

"Who's 'we'?" John asked. What the hell were they doing out there, anyway? Cameron had told him that Derek's plan was to land on the carrier and convince Captain Wallace – using those delicate skills of diplomacy his uncle shared in common with Cameron, no doubt. Why hadn't they just landed on the ship?

_"Charley, Ellison, Derek, a squad of soldiers plus two pilots and Martin Bedell."_

"Bedell's dead," Cameron leaned closer to the mic as she spoke.

 _"Nah, he's messed up but Charley says he's gonna live."_ John could barely believe it; how the hell had he survived an HK crashing into him? He felt a small surge of relief well up inside him: Bedell was alive; he hadn't died for him. He could cross Bedell of the mental list of guilt and shame he'd written, of everyone who'd died for him, one way or another.

"He's watched the camp for three days," Cameron said to John. "He'll know if they've improved their defences."

 _"You read my mind, Cameron,"_ Davenport answered.  _"Before he... ah..._ passed out _, he said there's extra tin cans prowling around. We've got an OP on the camp and we can see at least three, maybe four T-2s; looks like they've got a couple more HKs, too. If you wanna call in some fast jets we can stay here and guide in the beam-riders."_

John looked to Cameron, confused. He was a general – of sorts. Everyone told him he'd done well and seemed to think he walked the walk, but he still couldn't much talk the talk. Military jargon was never really his thing.

"Missiles or bombs that home in on a laser-target designator," Cameron elaborated. John nodded in understanding at her then shook his head in response to Davenport's offer, despite the lieutenant being miles away and unable to see him.

"There's people inside," John said. "Not until we get them all out." He wasn't going to leave anyone in the camp – slaves, condemned prisoners, or those being bled dry upstairs – to their fate. He'd get them all out and then blow the hospital away, leave nothing left of it.

John got up out of bed, brushing away Cameron's hand as she tried to keep him sat down. She quickly understood he wasn't going to let her keep him in bed anymore, and saw the fire return to his eyes once again. "We're going on a rescue mission, Davenport. I'll get some help from here. Keep your radio on, I'll get back to you in an hour."

John bent down, wincing at his aching joints and muscles as he crouched, and unzipped the duffel bag Cameron had placed his clothes in. He pulled on his DPM uniform and laced up his boots, then moved across the infirmary to a mirror on a cabinet. The right half of his face was still covered in dressings and he realised he hadn't seen his burns just yet.

He turned away from the mirror, deciding he really didn't want to see it just yet. Maybe after they'd taken down the camp, but he still wasn't sure. It'd take him time to adjust, and they both knew it. He pulled out of Cameron's embrace and redid his DPM jacked once more. He saw Cameron looking at him and knew what she was thinking; he hadn't recovered, he should wait until he was better. "It's gotta be now, Cameron. Those machines were nearly ready; we wait and we might be too late. They could be gone by the time we get there and we'd never find them."

"We'll need help," Cameron said. She wasn't going to try and dissuade John; she knew it wouldn't work. She thought before that she didn't know what futility was; now she realised that futility was trying to talk John out of doing something when he was as determined as this. It was the same as the assault on Area 51; she'd have to restrain him to stop him and he'd never forgive her if she did. All she could do was stay with him and keep him safe.

"We need to speak to Wallace," John said to her. It was time to call in the marines.

* * *

George stood in one of the labs containing half a dozen cylindrical glass containers; each one holding an inert TOK-888 as their flesh slowly grew and formed into skin. They were mostly done now; these six were among the first to be created and the most developed so far. He looked through the crimson red solution and saw the machine underneath, encased in its organic sheath. It was completely hairless; not even eyebrows or lashes, and its skin was still pinkish, though no longer translucent at least.

"Are the organic components self sustaining?" he asked Richard, who had taken over running the project after Connor had killed Daniel and escaped.

Richard looked down at Daniel's notes and glossed over the Grey's latest report, then stared into the same tank that George was. "Yes," he said. "But they're not ready for activation yet. They need more time for the outer dermal layers to finish developing."

"Doesn't matter; it's what's inside that's important: hyperalloy combat chassis."

"You want to activate the TOK-Triple-Eights for  _combat?"_  Richard asked, taken aback. This was completely antithetical to the plans they'd painstakingly worked on for over fifteen years since arriving in the past. It had taken years to gather the resources and wealth needed to invest in the various projects linked with Skynet, and he had a hard time accepting they were just going to throw them unfinished into the front line. "Forgive me, George, but they weren't designed for this; they're no better off in combat than a Triple-Eight or basic endo." Probably worse, he thought, as their preliminary tests before Judgement Day – using the entrails of an unfortunate janitor working the nightshift at their laboratory – showed the organs couldn't regenerate like the rest of the machines' organic tissues and were much slower to heal. Enough damage could ruin them and destroy all their meticulous work.

"Do you want to leave the safety of this operation to a handful of Greys and the most primitive machines ever used by Skynet?" George asked. Even with the reinforcements they only had a platoon of T-70s, five T-1s, three T-2s, and two HKs. That should be enough to repel an attack of anything less than an armoured company, but George hadn't been chosen by Skynet to lead his brothers and sisters because he was careless. With Emily and Daniel gone there were now four of them left, plus four Greys. They'd fight, but not knowing what Connor would come back with made him uncomfortable; he wanted the machines in position, just to be safe.

"I get your point," Richard conceded.

"We can put them back in the tanks after Connor's dead," George said. "But we might need them to help win this fight and I'd rather have them activated and not need them than having to rush to bring them online when we're under fire."

Richard pressed the release button on the glass tube and the blood-based liquid inside started to drain into storage tanks under the floor so they could use it again if need be. It took a minute for the liquid to fully drain and then the top of it swung open from hinges at the top, exposing the machine fully to their view. The skin was noticeably pinker and looked slimy, yet the features were clear. The lips, nose and eyes were all fully formed. It even had fingernails.

George pried open its mouth to reveal two rows of gleaming white teeth. They'd yellow in time as the thinner layers of enamel wore off, about ten times faster than that on human teeth. They'd designed them that way so they could blend in better; this model even had a few crooked teeth so it wouldn't be betrayed by its own outward perfection. The tongue was fully formed and looked and felt just like the real thing. It still lacked taste buds in the tongue but they'd incorporated their own responses to tasting foodstuffs into the machines' programming so they had a set list of 'preferences' to different kinds of food they'd be likely to eat.

Richard pulled out a small metal box and inserted a small key into the lock, twisted it and opened the lid. Inside were twelve CPUs; the minds and souls of the machines. He picked on with a label that corresponded to the number on the tank and placed it on a tray. They weren't going to insert the chips at random; Skynet had programmed each chip in the future with enough information for the machines to portray an actual person, rather than a blank slate that looked human. Information the machines could access and pretend they were memories, or preferences for certain foods or items. They even had names. This machine – Number One – would assume the moniker of Dave Lancaster; an unmarried bus driver from Sacramento who enjoyed base jumping and watching college basketball. The real Dave Lancaster had been a corporal in the Resistance who'd been tortured by Charles Fischer for weeks until he'd divulged every aspect of his life prior to Judgement Day.

George took a scalpel and cut a semicircle just above the right temple until the flap of flesh hung loosely over the side of the head. He took a power screwdriver to the two rotating cylinders on top of the port cover and unscrewed them in turn. They'd made it even harder to get to the chips on these models; so even if someone managed to disable it then they'd take a lot longer than on previous models to extract their CPUs. The weakness to electric shocks had been designed out of these models – something they'd been able to consider when designing the machines in a world full of electricity, unlike in the future where it was a rare, sparse commodity among the Resistance.

Skynet had been unfortunate in the future: when terminators had been shocked they never came into friendly contact with Skynet again, so there had been no reports of the weakness to electricity until Connor had created a substantial army of reprogrammed machines. One of his brothers had had to infiltrate an important bunker to learn why so many terminators had disappeared, and by the time he'd discovered the vulnerability to electricity it was already too late; the war had turned in Connor's favour. He'd ensure that never happened again.

Once the locking cylinders were undone, he slipped the scalpel blade under the port cover and wedged it free, then placed it onto the same tray as the CPU. He pulled out the shock dampening assembly and slotted the chip into its socket in the centre of the skull. George started to reassemble the chip's protective housing and sealed the CPU back inside the skull, then took a bottle of superglue and squeezed out some onto the chrome skull and flattened the skin onto it. It would hold the skin to the rest of the scalp and to the skull until the wounds healed again in a few hours.

George and Richard stepped back and moments later the machine's eyes opened, revealing dull brown eyes that swept left to right as it scanned the room and analysed the two infiltrators. George accessed his neural implant and 'broadcast' a signal to the TOK that identified him as an ally and told the machine to follow his commands – a code that Skynet had programmed all its machines to understand.

"Say something," George ordered it. "What's your name?"

"I'm Dave," the machine smiled at him with false enthusiasm and held out its hand for him to shake. George shook its hand and smiled. It had instantly referred to its alias; that was a good sign. And it had sounded very, very human.

"Voice module seems okay," Richard said quietly.

"Run a diagnostic check on all systems," George commanded it. The machine's face dropped from its false smile into a blank expression and looked blankly forwards as it obeyed the order and only two seconds later reached its conclusion.

"I'm one hundred percent," 'Dave' answered in a direct, emotionless voice more typical of the machines. George figured that to the machine – born with its flesh incomplete – that it could well consider that state a hundred percent. Either way it was combat effective and that was all that mattered.

"The armoury is on the third floor," George said to the machine. "Put some clothes on, grab a weapon and ammunition, and report to Michael in the security office on this floor." As the machine marched out of the room George turned to Richard. "Let's get the rest online."

* * *

Wallace stood on the bridge and looked out in the direction of the California coastline, too far out to see with the naked eye. He couldn't believe what a fuckup everything had turned into: sending four helicopters out to extract Cheyenne Mountain's soldiers – against his better judgement – and losing two of them. That damned brunette girl had stolen one, according to her own account, and she and Bedell had flown in to rescue John Connor, and coming back with some damn kid and minus one of his ship's best officers.

What made it even more ridiculous was that 4th Infantry's acting commander – General Perry – had tried to assure him that said kid was indeed General Connor, and the girl with him was actually a  _machine._ These people needed a goddamn psychiatrist, he thought. The kid knew about Bedell, though; knew about Presidio Alto, knew how Bedell had a fondness for running. Wallace had seen the lieutenant running the length of the ship and back every day more times than anyone cared to count every morning, going at it like he was training for a marathon. The kid claiming to be Connor had that right.

"We've got people out there," Perry grumbled behind him. Wallace had let Perry onto the bridge, seeing as the two respective commanders would have to pool their resources when they figured out what the hell they did next. "Yours, too," Perry continued.

"We don't know where," Wallace turned to face him, hands resting behind the small of his back. "And to be honest, I'm not crazy about sending more of my men to rescue your guys after we've already had one chopper hijacked by that girl you claim is a robot, and given your unit's disposition, there being a very good chance the other was taken over, too.

"It was," John pushed the door to the bridge aside and stepped in, followed by Cameron. The bridge crew all turned to face him and stared at his half-bandaged face. John knew he'd have to get used to the stares; even more so when the dressings came off eventually.

"I never gave you permission to enter," Wallace growled. He saw  _'Connor'_  stencilled on the front of his uniform and frowned. It was all adding up but he just didn't want to believe it.

"I don't need to ask," John replied. "Everything Perry said is true; I'm General Connor, Cameron's a cyborg. My men hijacked your helicopter to rescue me and are in Century City." Wallace stared at John; saw the fire in his eyes. He'd never seen such hardness in someone so young. He had the same hard gaze in his eyes that Wallace had only seen in hardened veterans; men who'd seen things they never should have, and were forced to carry it in their heads for the rest of their lives. It was clear he'd suffered appallingly, but that didn't mean he was in charge, and he wasn't ready to follow someone half his age.

"Prove it," he said finally.

John grinned in reply; he could do  _that._  He turned to Cameron, now stood at his side. "Show him," he told her.

Cameron considered the best way to reveal her true nature and ran through the options in the time it took a person to blink. She stared at Wallace and her eyes glowed bright, piercing blue. She then stepped forward and grabbed a handful of the captain's shirt, then lifted him up into the air, ignoring his surprised cry as he was lifted clean off the deck. The rest of the crew on the bridge shot out of their seats and stared, bewildered, as she held him up with one hand, unsure what to do. A couple of them started to advance towards Cameron and John.

"Easy," John held his hand out, palm facing towards them. "She's not hurting anyone." He knew Cameron wouldn't harm anyone unless they were a threat to him. A sceptical captain wasn't a threat; just an annoyance.

"Satisfied?" Cameron asked Wallace, using his own voice as she spoke. She sensed his raised heartbeat and temperature, saw his wide-eyed gaze and open mouth and could tell he was afraid. She held him in the air for five seconds and lowered him back down. Wallace nodded, unsure how else to respond.

"Good," John smiled, creasing the dressings covering his cheek. Even smiling was painful; he decided he'd have to act a little more stoically, like Cameron, or else every expression he made for the next several weeks would hurt like hell until his burns healed. "If you need any more proof I can have Perry here get all my guys to confirm it."

Perry nodded in response. He'd learnt in the siege of Cheyenne Mountain that he really didn't want to be in charge of everything; not against Skynet. He was more than happy for Connor to run the show; he'd never say it but he was glad the kid was back. All the way through the siege he'd wished he was a ranker. He hadn't been, though; he was an officer and it had fallen to him to take command. He hadn't liked it, though; he didn't mind organising men or directing a battle, but he just couldn't get in the machines' heads like Connor could. He realised, grudgingly, that the machine had something to do with that. As long as it didn't turn on them; he still didn't trust it.

"You might be in charge of your soldiers, Connor," Wallace said. "But this is still my ship; I'm not putting it or my men in danger for you."

John was getting tired of this; he'd gone through the same thing with his own men at the start of the war, then again in Area 51 with the traitor, Ryan's, men. He wasn't going to put up with this every time they met up with other people; it couldn't go on like that or they'd never get anywhere. The sailors and marines on board followed Wallace, and he wouldn't risk them to launch a mission to raze the camp. There was something he'd go in there for, John knew. He decided to play his trump card. "There's something else you need to know; Martin Bedell is still alive."

"Then we're getting him out of there," Wallace replied instantly. He'd lost so many pilots over the past months; he wasn't going to leave Bedell behind now. He couldn't live with himself if he just abandoned Bedell to his fate.

"We're getting  _all_  of them out of there," John said. He wasn't going to leave anyone behind to be worked to death, poisoned, or cut up and slaughtered like cattle for George's new breed of machines.

"4th Infantry is ready, Connor," Perry offered. He'd prefer to trust his own guys over jarhead marines, any day. They were all seasoned veterans against the machines now; each one of them.

John nodded to Perry in thanks, but he had a different idea. He turned to Wallace once more. "We're going back for them and I want your help."

The cold, hard gaze was back in John's eyes, making it clear to Wallace that John wasn't asking: it was an order. He still couldn't believe this kid was meant to be General Connor. How the hell had that happened, and why was Perry – a seasoned officer – taking orders from him? If he'd known all those months ago the voice on the other end of the radio was a twenty-one year old kid then he'd have laughed his head off and switched frequency to someone with a deeper voice. Still; according to Perry, this was the John Connor from Cheyenne Mountain, who'd organised several remnants of humanity and told them what to do, when nobody else had known what was going on. Things were so crazy after the bombs had fallen, so why should this be any different?

"Okay," he said simply.

* * *

Cameron lay prone next to John, only their weapons between them as they bounced up and down in the almost total darkness all around them. She turned her head slightly to watch him beside her, able to see in the darkness without any problems whatsoever. John stared out into the black in front of him, not bothering to shield himself as icy cold water blasted him in the face and drenched the dressings Cameron had administered. She sensed a slight flinch and the occasional hiss of pain as saltwater soaked into his wounds. The water would help keep it clean.

Cameron also clung onto the inflatable boat as it bounced on the roiling waves towards Santa Monica beach; her auditory sensors could hardly pick up anything over the loud buzzing drone of the outboard motor behind them, piloted by one of the four marines behind them. Another boat ran parallel to theirs and carried another eight of  _Nimitz's_  marine contingent, all armed to the teeth with machine guns and armour piercing weaponry. Wallace grudgingly agreed to follow John and had placed them under his command, and Perry had tried to convince him to use their own men. Cameron had agreed with Perry; the 4th Infantry soldiers were more loyal to John and more likely to follow his commands.

John turned to face her and smiled, then let go of one of the handles at the bow – clutching twice as hard with his left hand still holding on – and reached back to gently squeeze her fingers. Despite himself and the gravity of the mission they were about to undertake, he was enjoying the ride. He'd never been on a boat before, especially not a fast raiding craft like this; and the combination of speed, open air, the water, and the bumpy ride got the adrenaline pumping in his system. As long as he – or more importantly, Cameron – didn't fall out, they'd be okay. It wasn't so bad if he fell out; they could stop the boat and pick him up, but Cameron didn't float. If she fell out she was going straight to the bottom. He'd made her wear a lifejacket for that very reason but he didn't want to test its effects on cyborgs right now.

"How long?" John shouted at the top of his voice into Cameron's ear, struggling to be heard over the engine.

Cameron estimated they were five miles out from the shore, and were travelling at forty knots. "Seven minutes," she spoke loudly into his ear. She didn't bother saying how many seconds; she knew from past experience she didn't have to be that precise. "You should have taken more men," she added.

John shook his head, knowing she also thought he should have used his own soldiers. They were more experienced with machines, but they couldn't think of themselves now as 4th Infantry or the Marines, just the same as how people now shouldn't consider themselves American, or Russian, or Chinese... they were all just people, all fighting for the same thing. They had to all work together and that was why he'd insisted on using  _Nimitz's_  marines; he already had his own soldiers out there under Derek's lead, and what better way to integrate his men and Wallace's than with a joint mission? It was better in the long run.

"Just take a moment to enjoy it," John said to her, facing her so the water only splashed the undamaged left side of his face. Cameron took John's suggestion literally and suspended all other conscious processes, closed her eyes and just lay still, letting the water spray over her face and making no move to wipe it away. She enjoyed the feel of the icy cold spray as it struck her skin and made her organic nerves tingle, transferring the sensation through to her cybernetic sensors. She filed the sensation away to replay it again later when she had the opportunity.

"Cutting the engine," one of the marines called out, then the buzzing roar of the engine died down and the boat slowed down, ambling in the water silently as the second craft did the same. John and Cameron stayed prone on the ground and both shouldered their weapons – Cameron's SCAR-H and a Diemaco C8 carbine from Fort Carson's Special Forces armoury for John. It was lighter than the standard M4, which was one reason why Cameron had chosen it for him. They both stared forward and looked for the shore as the marines started to paddle forward, silently approaching the coastline.

John couldn't see the shore with the naked eye; there were no lights and any aircraft were flying too low to be seen from a mile out at sea. But his rifle's scope illuminated the scene before him and he could just make out land in the distance. Cameron didn't need her weapon's sights and had done away with the scope completely, only needing her own targeting systems. Somebody else  _would_  need it, so she'd placed it in the armoury after choosing John's weapon for him. She'd have preferred a larger calibre weapon for him but the only 7.62mm firearms on board the carrier were machine guns or sniper rifles: neither of which were suitable for John.

When they reached the shore John and Cameron were the first to step out into the shallow water and waded onto the once pristine golden sands of Santa Monica Beach. They both lay prone on the ground as the some of the marines joined them in a defensive semicircle and the others pulled the boats onto the sand so the tide wouldn't take them back out to sea.

Cameron kept a careful watch over John in case he showed any signs of struggling. If he did then she'd find a safe place for him and lead the mission herself under his authority. He'd resist if she tried but she wouldn't let him endanger himself any more than he already had if his condition started to deteriorate. She was surprised he had the strength to lead the mission. Future-John had told people that humans had a strength that couldn't be measured; that hadn't made sense to Cameron, who saw everything as quantifiable.

John should be resting, shouldn't be able to hold a weapon and lead from the front, but he was, and showed no signs of slowing down. She didn't understand where or how he found the strength to continue when all her scans indicated he was in such bad condition; even Future-John would have waited several more days or sent someone else. She couldn't help a small smile creasing her lips as she looked across at her lover. As far as Cameron was concerned he'd surpassed his future self.

The marines all lay out in defensive positions and remained still as they waited for any sign that their landing had been detected. After ten minutes of laying on the cold, damp sand John saw a small light flashing three hundred metres to their left and at the far end of the beach. It flashed twice and went dark, then repeated the action ten seconds later. John nodded to Cameron; that was their prearranged signal from Derek's group. John got up to his feet and jogged up the beach, slowed considerably by the sand as his boots sank slightly with each step. Cameron could have easily outpaced all of them still but she kept only just ahead of John in case she needed to cover him from incoming fire.

Derek stepped out of the darkness from underneath strewn debris and stepped towards John, Davenport just behind him. As soon as he was in arm's length Derek pulled him into a hug and slapped him on the back, a grin on his face like a Cheshire cat. "Jesus, John; the mess you got yourself into."

"Good to see you, Boss," Davenport stood to attention in front of John and gave a crisp salute.

"Cut that out," John snapped, returning the smile as he reached out and shook Davenport's hand instead. He hated being saluted and reckoned that was half of why Davenport had done it. After all Cameron had told him about the siege on Cheyenne Mountain John figured he was as glad to see them again as they were to see him.

"Charley and Ellison will be glad to see you," Derek added. "Ellison's in charge of the squad, half a klick north of the camp and Charley's taking care of Bedell. What the hell happened in there?"

"Infiltrators," John replied. "George."

 _"George_  is in there?" Davenport couldn't believe it. That guy just didn't know when to fuck off.

"He's farming people for blood and organs, making a new kind of cyborg; like Cameron but with organs and everything." Cameron disagreed that they were like her; she was unique and John had said so before, but she knew he meant in terms of their capabilities and decided not to comment.

"George set up the work camp," John added.

"That's why it's up and running early, then," Derek figured. Nothing was working out the way it should have in this time; Skynet was progressing much faster than in his future. It was pretty obvious to him now that George and his infiltrators were the reason why.

"We've got a score to settle with that guy," Davenport muttered.

"You're not the only one," John pointed to his soaking wet wound dressings. He wasn't going to leave Century until all the TOK-888s were destroyed and every last infiltrator and Grey in the camp was dead.

"What did he do to you?" Derek asked, looking closer at John's dressings. He placed a red filter over his flashlight and shined it on John's face. The bandages were soaked through and peeling off at the corners but they still held, so he couldn't see the injuries underneath; but he could imagine what that sadistic hybrid bastard had done to John. He was in bad shape; he'd been around a hundred-and-eighty pounds before he'd ended up in Century: now he was all skin and bones; the musculature he'd built up from his training had all but wasted away. His wet uniform clung to his shrunken frame and Derek couldn't help but feel guilty that he wasn't there.

"He tortured him," Cameron replied as she inspected his dressings. She'd have to change them at the earliest opportunity, preferably before they attacked the work camp.

John didn't want to go into details with anyone about what George did to him; he didn't want to relive it again. Maybe to Cameron later, but definitely not in front of all the marines around them.

"You held out," Derek smiled at him. "You didn't break." He looked at Cameron and remembered the torture he'd gone through in that godforsaken basement in the future, and never seeing Kyle again after. As bad as the machines were, he could easily imagine George being even worse; the sick bastard probably took pleasure in the act and got off on it; probably did it as much for his own amusement as for getting any information out of him.

"We should move," John changed the subject. He was wet and freezing and they couldn't afford to stand around chatting anymore.

They moved out in silence. Derek led the way through the ruined city, pausing several times along the way as machine patrols approached or flew overhead. John had spent so much time in the camp, surrounded by machines guarding them that he'd almost forgotten what it was like to have to run and hide from them. Especially since he'd taken command in Cheyenne Mountain they'd been on an almost even footing with Skynet in Colorado; this was the first time since J-Day that he actually felt like he was leading a guerrilla resistance rather than a company of soldiers.

Eventually the devastation cleared and gave way to the lesser damaged areas, and they passed by the ground floors of buildings John recognised from the inside of Century Work Camp. Derek led them to where the rest of his men had gone to ground and hidden themselves away. Derek put the marines in defensive positions, leaving Davenport in charge, and took John and Cameron to the interior of a red semi trailer.

John stepped inside and could barely believe his eyes as he looked down on the immobilised form of Martin Bedell sat on the ground, propped up against one of the walls as Charley tended to him.

"John!" Charley stared at him, wide-eyed in shock. John nodded back to him and shook his hand, pulling him into a hug and slapping him on the back. He pulled back and saw Martin Bedell on the ground, his back propped up against the trailer wall, his legs splintered and covered with bandages. One of his eyes had a ring of dark purple bruising emerging around it.

"Jesus, Martin! What the hell were you thinking?"

"Nice to see you too, Connor." Bedell said; Charley had set and splinted his legs and the morphine was kicking in nicely, reducing the pain to a dull ache.

"We thought you were dead," Cameron said simply. It wasn't an apology for leaving him behind; if she'd known he'd survived the crash she would still have left with John.

"You did the right thing," Bedell nodded to her.

 _"You_ didn't," John reached down and smacked the back of Martin's head like he was swatting a fly. He'd been hugely relieved when Davenport had told him Bedell was alive, but now he was just pissed that he'd so recklessly risked his own life for him. "When I tell you to run, you  _run._ Next time you don't listen I'll shoot you myself."

"You wanna shoot me for disobeying orders, sir, you'll have to get in line behind the tin cans," Bedell shot back. He'd do it again in a heartbeat if he had to; though next time he'd think about running sooner or at least ducking.

"I'll remember that," John replied gruffly.

"Bedell watched the camp until we got here," Charley told John. "They've got an army of machines now."

"At least three T-2s, a pair of HKs now, and thirty or so T-70s, and who knows what else in the hospital," Bedell elaborated. "I hope you've got a good plan, John. The camp's a fortress and I can't see a way in without being caught."

An aircraft soared loudly overhead, sounding so low they could have reached up and touched it. John peered outside the trailer and saw the landing lights of an Osprey as it descended into the camp to drop off a fresh batch of prisoners. Night flights were uncommon but they did happen.

"That's how we get in," John pointed up at the descending aircraft. "George infiltrated Cheyenne, right?" Derek looked to John and nodded in reply. "Then we do the same."


	31. Century, Part One

John stood atop a four-storey office building overlooking the hospital grounds of Century Work Camp; one of the closest structures to the camp, it was still roughly intact barring the shattered windows and blown-out doors. The blast wave from the bombs had weakened by the time it had hit this part of the city; it hadn't been able to level buildings like closer to Ground Zero, or cause any serious structural damage, but eventually they'd crumble and fail; either through sheer neglect or as victim to the fighting that would ensue in the coming years.

John got down and lay prone on the roof – partly to avoid being seen by any machines and also to save some energy; he knew he hadn't fully recovered but he  _had_ to do this. He held his C8 tight with the butt snugly pressed against his shoulder and stared through the optical sight down into the work camp. He saw a mass of people milling round in the condemned section of the camp, which to John looked like it had expanded somewhat.

"Does it look bigger to you?" John asked Cameron, laid prone next to him and staring with her naked eyes into the camp grounds. She compared the dimensions of the camp to what she'd observed before with Courtney and again with Martin Bedell, and saw that John was right. The northern perimeter fence – the one closest to them – was forty-nine metres further out than it had been last time.

"They're expanding the work camp." She knew what would happen to the camp if it was allowed to continue: the perimeter would expand initially, then more gas chambers would be built to increase the numbers of humans killed each day and improve efficiency in the camp. When George's infiltrators deployed the new machines they'd likely install a computer core into the security systems and allow Skynet to take control of the camp. The AI would recognise the efficiency of orderly disposal and would eventually establish similar work camps at locations all over the world and exterminating the remaining humans in the hundreds of millions.

"Can you see Byrne?" John asked her. He couldn't make out individual faces in the condemned section of the camp, just saw the bodies; great if he wanted to shoot someone but not enough to make a positive ID.

Cameron rapidly scanned every individual in the larger half of the work camp and came up with no matches. It was four days since she'd met him; it was likely he'd been killed and his body burnt, but she knew John wouldn't want to hear that. She scanned the worker's section – to eliminate it from any possibilities – and was surprised when she saw him. A tall, dark-haired man in tattered DPM fatigues. That was the same man who'd told her John was in the hospital. He was pushing an empty cart towards the gas chamber.

"I see him," Cameron said. She saw a circular bulge in his pocket and surmised he still had one of the two grenades she'd given him. "He's alive." She was also surprised that he was back in the workers' section after being assigned for disposal.

John nodded and smiled. "Good." He hefted a small pack in his hands; it felt heavy but then knowing what he'd put into it, that was a good thing. "It's all in there?" he asked Cameron.

"Four blocks of C4, a detonator, a disassembled M4 carbine, four thirty-round magazines, and a note." John had written a note and slipped it into the bundle, instructing Byrne to turn the radio on at exactly ten minutes past midnight, after the camp had shut down until morning. "Why him?" Cameron asked.

"He's an explosives expert," John explained. "He showed me how to make the bombs we planted. How to give them a bigger bang, where to bury them, and how to set them off, blow the fence up, or the gas chamber, or just to keep the machines' attention elsewhere."

Cameron nodded and took the bag from John as she got up to her feet. She felt the weight of the bag, estimated Byrne's distance from her, and wind speed and direction, and calculated the exact force she needed. She pulled back her arm and threw the small, tightly wrapped bundle into the air, lobbing it in a high arc as it soared over the perimeter fence. She watched as it rose and then fell into the camp, and landed with a soft thud one metre away from Byrne.

"He has it," Cameron said.

"Did you ever think about the NFL if we'd managed to stop all this?" John grinned at her. "Arm like that you'd have made a hell of a quarterback."

"They wouldn't let cyborgs play," Cameron replied.

"Shame," John said as he got up and turned towards the fire exit they'd kept propped open, "could've been rich. Let's get back down to the others."

They made their way down the stairs of the abandoned building, every step echoing so loudly John was sure it would attract the machines to them. They quickly left the office block and moved down two blocks towards the semi truck on the highway turning where they'd left Bedell and the others. All the soldiers -4th Infantry and Marines – were now armed to the teeth. Magazines were slotted into rifles, grenade launchers loaded, and ammunition belts wrapped around machine guns as the mixed platoon readied themselves to take on Century Work Camp.

John marched past them, nodding to them all as he made his way towards the broken trailer. Inside Charley was preparing his medical pack, readying himself to help any casualties. Bedell was arguing with him as John entered but the pair of them shut up the moment they saw him enter.

"What's going on?" John asked, looking to Charley and back again at Bedell.

"He wants to help," Charley replied. "John, tell him he's gotta stay here; he won't listen to me."

"We got any sniper rifles?" John asked, looking down at Bedell. "Cameron said you're pretty good with them."

"One of the Marines has an AS-50," Bedell replied. "I saw it earlier."

John tightened his jaw as he contemplated his decision, then turned to Cameron. "How many machines do you think there are?" he asked her. They'd seen thirty T-70s but that didn't mean there weren't more inside.

"Possibly forty, plus the T-2s, Greys and infiltrators."

"Don't forget the HKs," Bedell added. "You need everyone you can get."

"Charley, go get that rifle and bring it here." Charley stared at John as he openly defied all sense in letting Bedell be a part of the operation, but he knew he couldn't talk him out of it. "You stay here," John told him sternly, "and give fire support. Any more heroics and I'll tell Ellison to shoot you." Ellison would never do such a thing to his fellow man, but Bedell didn't know that. John really was glad Bedell was alive and later on he'd thank him for helping Cameron to rescue him, but he had to make sure Martin wasn't going to get himself killed for him – again.

Derek, Davenport and Ellison entered the trailer – now their impromptu HQ while they were in position and awaiting the attack. John nodded in satisfaction; everyone who mattered to him – as well as the most important people under his command – was all here.

"What's the plan?" Derek asked John.

"Said something about infiltration?" Davenport added, hoping John was about to elaborate on it.

"We're going to fly into the camp and attack it from the inside," John said. "Me, Cameron, you two," John pointed to Derek and Davenport. "And a squad – Marines and our guys – fly in. Ellison, you're in charge of fire support; take out the T-2s and as many other tin cans as you can at the same time we hit. We'll spread out and take out all the machines. When that's done I want the fire support guys in to lead all the prisoners back to Santa Monica Beach.  _Nimitz_ is gonna have boats and helicopters waiting to take us all on board.

"When the machines are down everyone in the camp will split up and attack the hospital. Cameron, me, and a team will fly onto the hospital roof and fight our way down; the rest of you fight up: take them from two directions at once. Any questions?"

"Just the one," Charley said. "What exactly are you going to fly into the camp on?"

"You'll see," John replied. "I need a volunteer; someone fast and loud."

Silence descended inside the trailer as all eyes fell on Davenport.

* * *

The lights of the camp shut off and descended the camp into darkness, on schedule as always. All the prisoners dropped their work and hurriedly moved en masse towards the living area. All but one. Byrne reached into his cart and pulled the bundle that had fallen out of the sky, stuffed it under his filthy DPM jacket, hugged it tightly to his body and tried to flatten it against himself as he moved to the small dark space between the accommodation building and the fence that bisected the camp. He ignored the condemned prisoners on the other side as they slept, sat, or in some cases wandered aimlessly within the expanded space of the compound. Byrne was surprised as hell that the machines had kept him alive. He figured they'd assumed everyone from the gunpowder plot would be dead by now, and all thoughts of escape had died with them. "All but one, cunts," he muttered as he pulled back para-cord and unfastened buckles to open the package. "All but one."

Even in the blackness of the night Byrne could make out the four small square bricks – the same size and shape as blocks of butter in the supermarket. One of the objects was a miniature torch, and Byrne switched it on, keeping his fingers over the lens so only a miniscule amount of red-filtered light got through. He quickly saw – not that he needed to be able to tell – that the blocks were C4 plastic explosives, complete with detonators, and even in the dark Byrne recognised the disassembled components of an M4A1 assault rifle.  _This is too bloody weird,_ he thought as he placed the pieces back into the bag. It would stick out like a sore thumb if he put it together now, and the machines would waste him on the spot if they saw it.

He picked up the radio and saw the note attached. A quick shine of the light revealed a note attached.  _Turn the radio on at exactly 00:10._ Byrne didn't have a watch on him but he figured it must have been at least five or six minutes already since the camp closed down.  _Close enough,_  Byrne checked the volume on the radio was turned down low and kept the frequency the same as he switched it on.

"Hello?"

_"Byrne; it's John."_

"Jaysus, John; what the hell are ye doing still here?" He sighed in relief that the kid had gotten out okay, but he'd thought – no,  _hoped_  – that John would have ran and not come back. They were all fucked in the camp; their plan had failed and he'd stared to accept that he wasn't ever going to get out. The machines would be on to them scavenging so he didn't think the same trick would work twice.

 _"We've come to get you out,"_  John replied.  _"All of you."_

"Listen to me, Johhny Boy; there is no out. Tin cans fixed the hole your Cameron blew in the fence and there's twice as many of them now. It'd take a bloody army to get through this." Byrne quickly looked to his left and right to make sure nobody – human or machine – was nearby, listening in on his conversation. He was being as quiet as he could but he, John, and Slater had all assumed that the machines had better hearing than people. Was part of his training; couldn't be too careful and it never hurt to overestimate your enemy.

_"Handy I brought one, then. Listen; we're taking out the camp, tonight. We're going to come out shooting, and I need you to give a distraction with the C4 I gave you; keep the machines' eyes off us for a few moments."_

"Aye, I can do that." He didn't bother asking how John had managed to find anyone to attack the camp; that could wait for later. Though there was a burning question he thought he knew the answer to, but found himself having to ask. "Slater?"

The hesitation told Byrne all he needed to, even before he got an answer.  _"He's gone... I'm sorry."_

Byrne nodded solemnly to himself. He figured as much, though that didn't make it any easier. He'd lost a lot of friends in his career and even though it was the nature of the job, and they moved on, it still stuck with him. He'd lost friends in Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan, and it never got any easier.

"I'll be ready," he replied, then put down the radio and waited.

* * *

Davenport felt his heart beating a mile a minute, going berserk inside his chest as he peeked around the corner of the building he was hiding behind and saw a pair of T-70s approaching.  _Crap,_  he moaned to himself. He was all up for a fight with the machines but not like this. He was completely unarmed, not even a pistol or a knife on him and just the clothes on his back. Connor assuring him he was better off unarmed. He hoped Connor was right; he always seemed to know what he was doing but he wasn't the one about to go up against a pair of minigun wielding machines without so much as a potato gun. He bent down and picked up a piece of brick from one of the many shattered buildings in Century City centre and hefted it in his hand.

 _Screw it,_  he thought; might as well get on with it. Davenport jumped out from the corner and faced the two machines, only ten metres away. "Hey assholes!" he shouted out at the machine as the Marines stepped out and joined him. He tomahawked the brick at one of the machines and it struck squarely in its chest, clanging loudly and dropping to the floor with a clatter but causing it no damage at all, as expected. He turned and ran as fast as he could, sprinted back behind the cover of the building and tore his way down the road. "Come get me!"

The machines ran awkwardly forward on their clunky, ungainly feet and Davenport couldn't resist looking back to see them sprinting like a pair of great, drunken giants. They clearly hadn't been built for speed but they still managed to gain on him and the two Marines as they plodded quickly forward on thick, flat metallic footpads. They'd reacted just as Connor said; not opening fire on unarmed humans close to the camp but instead deciding to capture them for orderly disposal.

Davenport ran towards half a dozen unarmed soldiers stood in the middle of the road and stopped in his tracks as he reached them and turned round to face the T-70s, raising his arms up in the air. He got down to the ground on his knees, as Connor had told him to, making himself as non-threatening as possible. The other soldiers did the same and got onto the ground in submission. The two machines stepped forward and raised their gun arms at them. Davenport stared in tense anticipation at the multi-barrelled weapons, expecting them to open up and tear him apart any moment. Instead the machines held position and stood sentinel over them.

"It's working," Davenport mumbled to them as the faint rumbling of rotor blades approached in the distance. The landing lights of an Osprey came into view and it descended slowly down onto the road. As soon as the tyres touched shattered asphalt the rear hatch opened, revealing the empty interior of the aircraft. The two machines approached them, weapons still trained on the soldiers, as they moved to shepherd the humans into the back of the aircraft.

Cameron plummeted down from above and struck one of the machines, kicking it hard and launching it into the side of a building, cracking the concrete wall as it struck and fell to the floor. The second machine turned to engage this new threat, swung its gun arm round and opened up with a volley of rounds, but Cameron had already dived forward and twisted under its line of fire. She rolled towards it and swept her feet out, kicking its legs out from under it. She spun round behind it and grabbed its head with both hand, and twisted hard. Metal ground on metal and support struts buckled and cracked as she tore its head clean from its shoulders.

She dropped the dead hulk and threw its head at the second machine as hard as she could as it stood back up, striking its face and forcing it a step backwards _._ She quickly shouldered her SCAR-H and fired once; the round shattered its optic sensor and penetrated straight through into the CPU, ricocheting around inside the head like an angry bee in a jar and tearing the electronics apart. The machine stood still for a long time and dropped to the ground, inert.

Cameron stood still and listened for any sign the engagement had been heard or that other machines were approaching to investigate. After ten seconds she heard nothing and decided they were reasonably clear. She pressed the com button on her radio. "It's clear," she told John.

John, Derek, and two squads of soldiers emerged from the dark recesses of several nearby ruined buildings and moved towards the Osprey. He smiled at Cameron and nodded. He wasn't worried about her; a pair of T-70s weren't a threat. Cameron taking on whatever machines they found was her idea; she'd said that a lot of gunfire would attract other machines and that was the last thing they wanted. A single shot from her and a short burst from one of the T-70s might go unnoticed amidst all the skirmishes taking place around LA, but a sustained firefight most definitely wouldn't.

"Good work," John nodded at Davenport as he handed him back his assault rifle.

"Yeah, thanks sir. Maybe next time you can be the bait?" Davenport replied.

"No," Cameron answered simply. She'd never let John put himself in danger like that, and she wouldn't risk John's capture or death again.

"We'll see," John said amicably, earning himself a stare from Cameron. He knew she didn't like it when he tried to contradict her on matters of his own safety. "Everyone on board," he gestured to the Osprey. "Next stop: Century Work Camp."

* * *

Byrne sat inside the accommodation block in stony silence, leaning up against a wall while the others slept fitfully, shivering on thin mattresses or under grimy sheets. Slow, laboured breathing and a few snores were the only sounds in the dark room. Byrne gazed around the room – his eyes accustomed to the darkness – and saw no signs that anyone was awake. He opened up his pack and attached detonators to the blocks of C4, and placed the remote in his pocket. He didn't know where John would be coming from so he decided to keep the explosives with him and choose where to place or throw them when the time came.

He pulled out all the parts for the M4 carbine and quickly assembled it with the practiced confidence of a Special Forces operator, then slotted a thirty-round magazine into place and slowly pulled back the cocking lever, charging a round as quietly as he could so the machines wouldn't hear the distinctive c _lack_  of a readying weapon. The loaded rifle in his hands felt reassuring and as he charged the weapon he felt like he was welcoming back an old friend.

"Where the hell did you get that?" one of the prisoners sat up in the darkness and stared at Byrne holding the weapon. "Got any more?"

"No," Byrne replied. He had the C4 and a hand grenade still but he didn't know any of these guys or whether any of them had ever been in the military. He wasn't going to trust explosives to just anyone. "Listen up," he spoke up slightly and prodded the people to his right and left. He waited until most of the workers had stirred and were sat upright, staring at the man with a weapon in his lap. Byrne was ready to use it if any of them tried to make a grab at him, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

"We're getting out of here," he told them. "Rescue party's gonna arrive soon. When it does I want all of ye to stay inside, okay?" They didn't need a bunch of hysterical prisoners running around in the middle of a fire fight. Their earlier plan had relied on that as a distraction but in a rescue all it would do was mess things up and get people killed.

"How'd you know someone's coming?" Someone asked, scepticism dripping in their voice.

"I just do," Byrne replied. "Ye wanna live, stay in here." He heard a faint whirring of rotor blades approaching in the distance, signalling what was very likely to be John's attack party arriving now. Or so he hoped. Byrne checked his thigh pockets and felt the three spare magazines inside the right, the C4 in the left, and his breast pocket still held the grenade. "Waiting on you now, Johnny Boy."

* * *

Ellison stared through a pair of binoculars at the camp down below, immersed in darkness and only visible through the natural light gathering ability of the field glasses. The night was slowly fading, though. No longer black but a purplish twilight as the dawn approached. He couldn't say he wasn't nervous about the operation: not for himself – he was a little under half a mile from the camp itself and concealed from view – but for John, Derek, Davenport, and even Cameron, as well as the soldiers with them. John had come up with a good plan but nobody had mentioned the fact that they all expected a lot of casualties even if they succeeded. The machines were tough and accurate; they'd been lucky so far and he couldn't help but wonder when that luck would run out.

He reached under his jacket and fingered his cross – an unconscious habit that he always did when he was nervous, and then pulled the binoculars away and looked down at his watch.  _05:55._

"Five minutes," he spoke in a low voice, but loud enough that the fire support team John had placed him in command of could hear him. "Everyone ready?" He was met with a chorus of  _ayes_ from the men surrounding him. Thirteen men including himself laid in wait in the neglected buildings of Century City surrounding the work camp; armed to the teeth with Javelins, Stingers, machine guns, and large calibre sniper rifles. "Mark your targets," Ellison told them all.

Martin Bedell lay on his front and grimaced against the pain in his broken legs, trying to ignore it as best he could as he held the AS-50 .50cal sniper rifle one of the Marines had brought ashore snugly to his shoulder and peered through the scope. He saw a T-1 rolling around the outside of the camp, patrolling an area just outside the Osprey landing field, where John would be landing. While it wasn't as heavily armed or armoured as its bigger brothers – the T-2s – its dual miniguns were still devastating.

"T-1 on the north fence," Bedell stated his target so nobody else would accidentally shoot it. Six of the thirteen men carried Javelin launchers, and had spent hours practicing mock firing and loading rockets until they couldn't humanly get any faster. One by one every soldier announced they each had a target, and they were ready. Bedell swung his rifle from the T-1 to a nearbyT-70, held his aim at it for two seconds, and then swung it back again. He did it back and forth repeatedly until he was confident he could swing from one to the next in less than a second. The rockets would take several seconds to load but his rifle was semiautomatic so he could fire shot after shot.

He hadn't told anyone but he'd taken a second role upon himself, in addition to general fire support; he was going to cover Connor's ass and take out any machine that got a bead on him.

He patted the ground to the left of his rifle and felt for the three extra magazines he'd placed there, making sure they were still in the same spot he'd left them, then checked his weapon once more. With all his preparations made all he could do now was wait.

* * *

Dawn broke over California and pitch blackness slowly faded into a mottled grey tinged with the barest hints of blood red as the rays of the sun tried to penetrate the thick clouds of dust that hung in the atmosphere. As black night slowly gave way to gloomy day a single aircraft flew low towards Century Work Camp. The Osprey flew slowly, the machine not in any hurry to deliver its human cargo to the concentration camp. The machine was a drone in every respect; lacking even a modicum of intelligence and making the T-70s appear smart by comparison. It simply followed its very basic programming and obeyed the commands it received: fly there, land, accept cargo, take off, fly to another destination, land, deposit said cargo. It had no consciousness at all and was fully unaware of what the cargo in its rear cabin even was.

John stood in the middle of the cabin, between the two rows of soldiers sat down on the seats. He felt nervous, to say the least. He felt his heart pounding in his chest and his head was throbbing. He was still in a fair amount of pain, too. Cameron and Charley had offered him morphine but he'd instead taken two Tylenol; the stronger painkiller would slow him down and make him sluggish, and he knew he had to be completely alert. After all he'd been through in the hospital the pain he was in now was nothing; he could ignore it for a while.

He looked left and right at the twenty-strong mixed force of 4th Infantry and Marines in front of him, all armed to the teeth. Most of them chatted to themselves but John noticed Derek and Davenport in silence, sat opposite each other by the rear hatch, having taken it upon themselves to be the first out of the aircraft and into the fray. He knew his uncle was never really the outgoing, sociable type, but he was surprised that Davenport was being so quiet.

"Okay, listen up," John called out above the roaring engines and the whirring rotor blades on the wings. He'd already briefed everyone on what they were doing, but there was something extra they needed to know. "When we take the hospital there'll be more machines inside. And something else; there's people inside, working for Skynet. And machines that look human." He gestured towards Cameron for emphasis. "Like her. They're stronger and faster than we are, and they're bulletproof. When we get inside, anyone holding a gun that's not either in uniform - or Cameron - is a cyborg. Don't hesitate; use grenade launchers first and open up with everything you have or they'll kill you in a heartbeat. Understand?"

The entire group answered as one with a resounding  _"yes sir!"_  though John wasn't sure the Marines were entirely convinced. His own 4th Infantry guys knew Cameron and had seen what she could do but the Marines only had his word on it, and although they knew he was in charge he could still see the sceptical looks on several of their faces. Still; they listened intently and soaked up what he said like a sponge. He just hoped they put it to good use.

Cameron looked out the cockpit and saw Century Work Camp getting closer as they approached. Soon she couldn't see the closest perimeter wire as they flew over it. There were three more Ospreys stood idle on the ground, offloading prisoners; half a dozen T-70s were stood guard over them. "We're here," she called out to John as she shouldered her SCAR-H. She also had an M-32 grenade launcher slung by her hip and an AA-12 shotgun over her back. When it came to protecting John no amount of weapons was sufficient. She moved into the rear cabin and joined John; she was going to stay by his side for the entire fight and ensure nothing happened to him. She stood beside him and felt his pulse raising through the slight contact between their arms. He was nervous. Cameron understood why; both in anticipation of combat and also because the work camp was a traumatic experience for him. She planned to watch him at all times in case being back in the camp affected him. She didn't think it would but it was best to be certain.

All the soldiers stood up as the Osprey slowed down to a halt and hovered in midair, then gradually descended as the rotor blades turned ninety degrees to face upwards. They all checked their weapons for the final time and John and Cameron moved to the rear hatch. Cameron kept John just behind her so any incoming fire would hit her instead; they were at their most vulnerable inside the Osprey.

John pressed his radio's com button, set to the same channel as all other sets involved in the attack so he could talk to everyone at the same time. "Everyone check in," he said.

 _"Ellison,"_ the former-agent's voice crackled over the radio.  _"Fire support's ready when you are, Connor."_

 _"Ready when ye are,"_ Byrne replied.

John allowed himself a slight smile; everyone was in position and ready. With a little luck this might just work, he thought to himself. "Everyone stand by... stand by..."

The aircraft touched the ground with a gentle bump, and all the soldiers stood to; their weapons readied, safeties off, and ammunition pouches opened. Davenport stood just behind the hatch, next to Cameron. Derek and John stood behind them, and the Marines and 4th Infantry soldiers in two lines further behind. The hatch slowly started to open and descend, and to John it took an age as it slowly revealed the camp in the dim light. The rear hatch finally opened enough to reveal a trio of machines approaching them, only a few metres away. John recognised the two-handed one as it came closer to brand them all with barcodes. What it would make of his and Derek's if it saw them, he had no idea. The idea of the machine being completely confused at it brought a slight smile to John's lips. He shook the idea off; it was time. "Go!"

Half a dozen rockets streaked through the air with a tearing  _whoosh_  and tore into patrolling T-2s and T-1s, shattering armour and tearing guns off stanchions, blasting them apart with enough combined force to level a building. Six rockets hit three T-2s and shattered the antitank robots and shattered them, leaving them broken, twisted and flaming hulks.

Another two rockets tore towards the roof of the hospital and exploded in brilliant flashes in the murky dawn against the two HKs parked on the roof, shredding their engines and rendering them useless. Flaming shrapnel caught their fuel tanks and they erupted in huge twin flaming blossoms of fire; fuelled by secondary explosions as their missiles detonated seconds later. Before the fireballs had even died down tracer fire streaked towards the camp.

Davenport raised his weapon at the T-70 outside as the hatch opened and fired the grenade from his under-barrel launcher, striking the machine's face and blasting its head and upper torso apart. Everyone else – apart from Cameron - snapped their heads to the sides, ducked down and covered their faces with their hands to shield themselves from the overpressure of the exploding grenade.

The machine dropped headless to the ground and Davenport leapt out the hatch before it hit the floor and opened fire with a long burst at another T-70. John, Cameron and Derek rapidly followed suit and spread out, firing as they went.

"Move!" John screamed at his men as they poured out of the Osprey like angry hornets from a disturbed nest, firing long bursts as they emerged and spread out. By now the entire camp had turned its attention to the intruders and machines marched towards the fire fight, shooting as they approached. John saw one soldier blasted apart into a bloody mess by a hail of gunfire as they moved outward into the open, then another. "Use the Ospreys as cover!" he shouted to them as he and Cameron darted to the nearest aircraft, ducked underneath and laid down prone, firing from relative cover.

Prisoners in the camp screamed and shouted in what seemed to John like a mix of fear and elation; many cheered on the soldiers, others jumped up and down at the fence, shouting and taunting the machines guarding them. They didn't move; they didn't even attempt to engage the soldiers, leaving it to the machines on the other side of the camp. They instead stood sentinel over their prisoners, as per their mission. _Stay where you are,_  John silently urged them. He didn't want them getting involved; they'd all be safer if they just stayed put and didn't try anything with the machines on their side.

Cameron fired a long automatic burst followed by a grenade from her SCAR-H, and two machines fell inert and shattered to the ground. Derek and Davenport were already prone underneath one of the large troop carrying aircraft and pouring fire at more T-70s, and the other soldiers rapidly found cover under and between the grounded aircraft and started to exchange rounds with the machines. John aimed and fired his Diemaco at a T-1 that approached from the hospital but his rounds simply bounced off the machine's armoured chassis and only served to catch its attention. He cursed under his breath that his weapon didn't have a grenade launcher attached, but he didn't blame Cameron for it: she'd chosen his weapon and he knew she'd have taken his weakened state and the weight of the rifle into account; the launcher would only serve to add more to what felt like an already heavy load.

"There," John pointed to the T1 as it rolled towards them and opened up with its twin miniguns; adding its potent fire to the hundreds of rounds shooting back and forth across the camp grounds and chewing into the Osprey's hull. Rounds pinged just above John's head, punched through the aircraft's fuselage and ricocheted inside its rear cabin. He just hoped that the aircraft didn't take off to avoid damage and leave them without any kind of cover. Cameron nodded in understanding, shifted her aim to the T1 and fired another grenade; the projectile slammed into its chest and blew its upper half to pieces.

"We're pinned down!" Derek screamed out, firing shot after shot at more approaching machines. He and Davenport laid prone under another Osprey and fired bursts at a T-1 engaging other soldiers. A T-70 joined in the fire fight and forced them to back away, leaving them blind and without a target. John looked around and saw almost a dozen machines closing in on them from the hospital and all around the camp, slowly encircling them.

"They're flanking us," Cameron warned John as more rounds ricocheted above his head. Any hopes of flying the Ospreys to the hospital roof were now gone; none of them would be in any shape to fly after the pounding they were taking. John saw the machines encircling the group and keeping up a tremendous rate of fire that never seemed to slow down, pinning them all in their positions. Their own rate of fire had dropped as they were forced to take cover, and he saw several DPM-clad bodies laid unnaturally still on the ground, scattered amongst the Ospreys and surrounded by spatters of crimson blood. John saw Derek and Davenport firing and ducking as a pair, targeting a T-1 with little effect; neither of them could aim properly with the insane amount of rounds the thing was hosing down on their position.

John looked to his left and saw the generator room thirty or so metres off to his left. It was a shattered ruin, blown apart by fire and the roof and tops of the walls had caved in, but it would do for now. "Cover me!" he shouted at the top of his voice to anyone who could hear him.

"What are you thinking?" Cameron asked him.

"This," John replied as he backed out from under the belly of the Osprey and jumped up to his feet. He took off and sprinted as fast as he could towards the generator room before Cameron could react or try to stop him. She got up and fired at the nearest T-70 as it turned its weapon towards him and fired off half her magazine into its head; dropping it before it had a chance to shoot him. She frowned at John, unslung her AA-12, gripped it in her free hand, and ran after him; keeping herself directly behind him to shield him as best she could. As soon as she made it into the generator room she pulled John down to the ground and glared at him, her eyes bright blue with anger.

"That was stupid," she told him, staring into his eyes.

"I know," John agreed as he grabbed her M-32 and shouldered it. Out the corner of his eye he saw Byrne emerging from the living area, rifle in hand and firing bursts at the machines and trying to draw their attention from John and Cameron's position. "I like stupid," he growled as he shouldered the weapon and stared down the barrel at the machines advancing on the soldiers underneath the Osprey. "'Stupid's' the last thing the machines expect." He got to his feet and fired off all six grenades in rapid succession. As he ducked down explosions rocked the machines firing on Derek and the others, and threw up dirt and twisted, shattered metal into the air.

Cameron fired off another grenade from her SCAR-H a split second after John's hits and blew a T-1's head clean off, then hosed down a pair of T-70s with armour piercing explosive rounds from the shotgun, punching through their protective plating with ease and shredding the delicate systems inside. She was angry that he'd been so reckless but as she scanned the area she realised exactly what he'd done – the same as their first fire fight outside Cheyenne Mountain on Judgement Day; outflanked the machines before they did the same. It had worked; they'd destroyed seven machines with their salvo and the remaining drones' rate of fire had dwindled significantly. She watched as Derek and Davenport burst from their hiding spot and concentrated their fire on the T-1 that had harassed them as it turned its attention to John and her.

"Nice work," Johnny Boy!" Byrne shouted as he fired a long burst into the back of a T-70; the rounds pinged off the armour and did no damage at all, and he ducked back inside the living space as the machine returned fire and shredded the walls of their accommodation. "Stay down!" he shouted at the prisoners inside; though most were laid flat on the ground with their hands over their ears. They were clearly shitting themselves as the structure around them was Swiss-cheesed. Byrne pulled out one of the C4 blocks from his pocket and grinned. The T-70 could shrug off 5.56mm fire unless it was a face shot. "Lets see ye shrug  _this_ off _,"_ he muttered. He ran out of the door and lobbed the block as hard as he could at the machine, and dived to the ground as its rounds tore over his head. A split second later and he knew he'd be dead.

He looked up as John fired more shots at the offending machine to take its attention from Byrne, and the SAS veteran looked up to see the C4 block on the ground just in front of it. He gripped the remote detonator in his hand and pressed the single button on top. The C4 exploded outwards and consumed the machine; the force of the blast threw what was left of the T-70 several feet backwards.

John waved in thanks to Byrne and dropped the empty grenade gun, shouldering his Diemaco once more and firing stead single shots, targeting their faces as probably the only weak point his rounds could penetrate. Cameron's combined 7.62mm and FRAG-12 rounds fired with deadly accuracy, however, felled one machine after another. There was no doubt in John's mind that without her this fight would have been ten times harder.

More rockets shot out from the fire support team and ploughed into more machines. A T-70 fell apart when a Javelin struck it in the chest, and a T-1's head exploded in a shower of armour plating and plastic, wire and silicone as a .50cal round struck. Somewhere in the distance, Bedell smirked and cocked his smoking weapon.

"Derek, Davenport, move to the living area," John ordered on his radio. He'd demolished the machines' flanking manouevre and most of the machines were now destroyed; those that weren't were under heavy fire from his soldiers as they found a second wind in the fight. Now they needed to press their advantage and break out before any more reinforcements arrived. "I need a squad to me," he said to everyone else. Moments later six more men ran from the backs of the Ospreys and towards his position. The machine's fire had died down considerably and John could see the rocket, grenade and tracer fire from Ellison's fire support team hammer away at robots both inside the camp and out.

As the squad approached him a burst of automatic fire tore through the last man of the group and he fell to the ground in a shredded, bloody mess.

"Sniper on the roof," Cameron warned John, keeping him low to the ground. She pointed her rifle up at he hospital roof as the remaining five soldiers reached them, took position and fired at the machines, covering Derek, Davenport, and another squad as they broke from their cover and ran towards the single storey living area. She couldn't see any target; the sniper was too far back from the edge of the roof to be taken out from inside the camp.

 _"I got it,"_ Bedell's voice sounded in both John's and Cameron's earpieces. Moments later a T-70 fell from the roof and smashed into the ground in a tangled mess of broken metal limbs. Cameron couldn't help but notice just inferior the T-70s were; she couldn't have survived the shot from Bedell's high calibre rifle but she could easily withstand a fall from the six storey building.

Cameron looked around the camp and scanned the battlefield. She counted thirty-six destroyed machines – many blown apart by rocket or grenade fire – then scanned for terminated humans.

"Eight soldiers are dead," Cameron reported. "Twelve of us left, plus Ellison's squad." John felt a sharp twinge of guilt at Cameron's words; they'd followed him to Century or had marched through the city to find him, and they'd all followed his lead to attack the camp. He'd brought them to Century and they were dead because of him. He shook his head and pushed the guilt aside. The work camp had to be destroyed and the prisoners freed; it was the right thing to do, regardless of how it worked out.

"We're going up top," John pointed to the black metal staircase on the outside of the hospital that led all the way up to the roof. Normally there was a machine guarding it but it had joined the battle and had been taken out, leaving it completely open. "Derek and Davenport's squad are gonna fight their way up the hospital; we're fighting our way down. Any questions?" None of them had any so John tore towards the staircase, followed by the others. He was the first to reach it but Cameron pulled him back harshly and took his place on point.

"Calm down," she told him firmly as she ascended the staircase first. She'd worried before that his experiences in the work camp could make him falter in the attack, but the opposite had proven true: John was angry; very angry, and it was making him bold and reckless. His decision to outflank the machines was right, but it shouldn't have been him who ran out like he did. He should have told her to do it instead.

"I'm in a bad mood," John explained to her as he climbed the stairs and reloaded the M-32 at the same time. He hadn't realised until Cameron pulled him back just how angry he was; he was up for a fight, he wanted blood: George's blood.

They reached the hospital roof and Cameron kicked in the fire exit door that led to the top floor, then burst inside with her rifle drawn. There was nothing inside; they were clear. John stepped inside, followed by the five soldiers behind him. "Derek, are you ready?" John asked. They needed to hit the hospital from top and bottom at the same time to make sure nobody – Infiltrators, Greys, or machines – managed to escape.

 _"Last of the tin cans are taken care of,"_ Derek replied.  _"We're waiting at the main entrance and Ellison's sent some of his guys forward to lead the prisoners outside."_

"Good," John breathed a sigh of relief. The machines were down. Nobody was going to die in this hellhole ever again. All they had to do now was clean up. "Now," John said to Derek. At the same time Cameron led them along the corridor and down a flight of stairs. John had seen all the machines and their labs on the second floor, so that was what they were aiming for. They descended another floor and cleared the corridors they passed, checking each and every room for any signs of machines. It was taking too long.

As they ran down the hallway a tall, broad-shouldered man walked into view from a crossing corridor and turned to face them. Both John and Cameron at once registered the pinkness of the skin and the total lack of any kind of hair. More pressing was the AK-74 held in its hands.

"Terminator!" John shouted out in warning as Cameron shoved him to the ground. The machine opened fire a split second later and shot one Marine through the heart and a second in the face; the back of his head exploded out onto the wall behind him and his face caved in completely, looking as if he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Before he hit the floor the other Marines opened fire, hammering the TOK-888 with bursts of automatic that shredded its skin and revealed gleaming chrome, but otherwise didn't harm it in the slightest.

"Stay down," Cameron told John. She turned towards the machine and fired her SCAR-H, taking the Terminator's attention off of the remaining Marines for a moment. The TOK-888 swung its Klashnikov around to Cameron and fired a burst at the centre of her chest; the rounds narrowly missed hitting her jacket by centimetres. Cameron advanced on the machine; it tilted its head in confusion as its shots failed to even slow Cameron down, not knowing what she was.

That split second of confusion was all it took for Cameron to launch a flurry of punches to the machine's face and force it a step backwards. She glared at the machine as it looked back with lifeless blank eyes and she drove her knee into the AK, bending the weapon and rendering it useless. The TOK dropped the gun and smashed its head into hers, then threw Cameron against the wall and slammed her repeatedly against it, cracking the plaster and the brickwork underneath.

"Cameron, duck!" she heard John cry out and let her knees buckle; she allowed gravity to pull her to the ground as John and the remaining soldiers opened fire. 5.56 and 7.62mm rounds pelted the machine, causing it to jerk and twitch from the inertia of so many rounds hitting it at once. Cameron jumped back up to her feet and grabbed the distracted Terminator by its jacket; she threw it as hard as she could against the window, shattering the blacked out glass from the impact. The TOK-888 flew clear of the windowsill, reached out to grab it and missed, and plummeted down to the ground outside. Cameron picked up her SCAR-H, pointed it down out the window as the machine got back up to its feet, but before she could trigger her grenade launcher a shot boomed out from the other side of the road outside and one side of the machine's head exploded. Tracer fire zipped through the air and drew lines towards the Terminator, forcing back to the ground as the weight of fire knocked it off balance. A second booming shot took the top of the machine's head off and it lay still.

"That was close," one of the Marines commented. The other two looked down at their two fallen comrades on the ground.

"What do we do about Carter and Klein?" Another asked.

"Leave them," John and Cameron found themselves both replying at once. John wasn't shocked at Cameron's saying it but the reverse was definitely true for the cyborg; she hadn't expected John to simply shrug off loss of life. He'd changed during his time in the work camp.

 _"Davenport to Connor,"_ the lieutenant's voice squawked loudly in John's ear.  _"We're bogged down in the main entrance; bastards are pouring lead into us."_

"Hold on, I'll send some help." John turned to the three remaining marines. "Head back the way we came and help out the other squad at the main entrance."

"Sir?" one of the Marines looked at him curiously. "Wouldn't it be better to stay as a squad?"

"They need help," John said firmly. "Go."

Cameron handed one of the Marines herAA-12 as they left; they'd need it more than her to fight the Terminators defending the entrance. John and Cameron marched down one and checked every room on both sides of the corridor. "In here," Cameron pointed to one of the rooms. She went in first, SCAR-H raised in case of any threats inside. She stepped into the room and found no movement at all. They were clear. John followed after her and his eyes widened at the sight.

They were in a laboratory almost identical to the one he'd hidden inside when Cameron had found him. Six transparent glass tanks filled the room, with pipes running inside to supply whatever chemicals needed to develop their organic components. He stepped closer to the tanks and peered inside. These Terminators weren't as far along as the ones he'd seen; John could still see the pinkish-red muscles and the veins beneath the blood-red liquid. This one was, however, developed enough that John could tell it was a female model: it was shorter and had breasts and curved hips.

"They're not ready," Cameron stated the obvious. That didn't matter to John; his jaw clenched and unclenched and he gritted his teeth as he felt himself getting hotter with anger. These... things were the reason why Slater and who knew how many others had been farmed for blood and then been gutted until they were empty. These things meant to destroy them all from the inside and bring Skynet victory. Months of misery and pain caused by George's experiments to create a perfect infiltrator...

John raised his Diemaco to his shoulder, pointed it at the closest tank and fired a burst, shattering the glass and spilling the bloody liquid all over the floor, splashing against his and Cameron's feet. He turned to the next and fired again, holding the trigger down as he swept his barrel from one tank to the next, the loud chatter of the automatic fire filling the room at a deafening level until all six vats were shattered; their occupants stood inert and bloody like pieces of meat on display in a butcher's shop window.

Cameron looked at the machines that were supposed to be so similar to her. Without their chips they were just metal. "They're not complete; their skin will die."

"Not good enough," John spoke through gritted teeth as he slung the C8 and shouldered the M-32. Cameron strode over to him and angrily snatched the weapon out of his hands before he could fire a shot. He wasn't thinking straight; an exploding 40mm grenade inside the room would injure or even kill him. "Calm down," she told him, being firm once more. She stared levelly into his eyes and made sure he was looking at her. She pulled him close to her and wrapped her arms around him; it helped calm him down usually. She felt John's pulse start to slow and he leaned into her embrace.

He looked around the room and realised she was right; he wasn't thinking straight at all. "Sorry. I went a little bit crazy, there," he sighed as he pulled away and handed her the launcher. He mentally slapped himself for losing control like that; he could have gotten himself killed. If it was anyone else in his position – going through what he had – he could have forgiven them for going nuts a little; but not himself. He was supposed to be a leader; cool, calculated, not making mistakes like that.

"It's okay," Cameron replied. She pulled away from John and marched up to each machine and snapped their heads to the side one by one with a  _crunch_  of metal spines snapping under her strength. The machines could be repaired but it would take time; nobody would activate them today. She walked out of the room and held the door open for John, and the pair of them started down the corridor.

Cameron nodded and led the way to the elevators to get down to the floor below. She'd never been in this part of the hospital before but she knew where she was relative to where the elevator was. She led the way down more corridors and found herself surprised they hadn't encountered more resistance. Perhaps George hadn't considered they would attack from above as well as the ground floor.

They reached the elevators and realised at the same time something was wrong; the doors were open but beyond them was only the dark, empty shaft. Cameron approached the empty space to investigate. She looked down at the ground and saw nothing, then looked up above her and saw the elevator car on the next floor up. If it were just her she'd drop down the shaft to assist Derek's unit but John likely wouldn't have the physical strength to climb down the cable without falling.

"We need to find another elevator," Cameron turned around back to face John. She heard a flurry of movement above and looked up. George dropped from a missing panel in the ceiling and kicked her hard in the chest, knocking her back into the shaft and sending her falling to the bottom. He turned around to face John and his face beamed at the thought killing the soon-to-be leader of mankind with his bare hands. He strode towards his enemy, eagerly awaiting the satisfaction he'd get from snuffing John's life out, slowly and painfully, and securing victory for Skynet. He was  _really_  going to enjoy this.


	32. Century, Part Two

Ellison surveyed the camp and watched carefully as the machines' fire faded, their numbers dwindled under the combined fire from his fire support squad, the assault team and John and Cameron's almost suicidal flanking manouevre. He couldn't imagine the cyborg being particularly happy with John putting himself in danger like that, but it had worked. Just like it had outside Cheyenne Mountain on Judgement Day, just like it had every time John threw himself against Skynet.

Another salvo of rockets blasted towards the camp and machine guns chattered, their tracer rounds glowing as they zipped through the air, and the camp grew silent as the last machine fell, shredded by fire from three separate machine guns and at least one grenade.

"Cease fire!" Ellison ordered. There was no more fire coming from within the camp and all the soldiers inside had split up to attack the hospital. It was time for the second stage of the operation, which in Ellison's case was to get the prisoners out. "We're going into the camp," Ellison told them all. He led the way and seven soldiers followed him. Charley, Bedell, and three others held the fort and kept eyes on the camp in case reinforcements showed up or any of the machines weren't quite dead.

They made their way out of their cover and crossed the main road towards the hospital grounds. As they got closer Ellison could make out individual faces peering through the wire at them. Several shouted and cheered, others smiled, but many still had the look of worry and fear on their faces. Ellison shook slightly as he saw several human heads stuck on spikes on top of the fences, looking in at the camp over the razor wire at the top. Up close he could see the dried blood smeared on the poles, the veins, strings of flesh, and their spinal cords protruding from the vertebra in their necks. He was grateful he couldn't see the faces, at least.

"How long's it gonna take to cut through?" Ellison asked one of the Marines – Harper, according to his uniform.

"Couple minutes," Harper replied. "But I got a better idea." The Marine pulled a hand grenade from a pouch on his vest and tossed it against the fence on the workers' side. "Fire in the hole!" he shouted a moment before the grenade blew, giving the soldiers a split second to get down.

The grenade struck the fence and fell to the ground, then exploded in a flash and tore through the fence, shredding the wire to pieces and leaving a large section of it sagging. Harper and Ellison pulled a large chunk of it aside and the latter stepped through. The workers nervously emerged out of their bullet-riddled housing and crowded round the agent-cum-lieutenant and the Marine PFC; all of them looked much the same – thin, tired, dirty and shivering. They all stank and their clothes were torn and filthy.

"Who are you people?" a tall, thin man in a grey sweater and jeans looked at Ellison in confusion.

"Moses," Ellison muttered, suddenly and inexplicably thinking back to the Old Testament. "Come to lead the slaves out of Egypt."

"O-kay?" the man replied, clearly not caring about the reference and only concentrating on the fact he was no longer a prisoner.

"We need your help," Ellison addressed the sixty-odd workers in front of him. "We've come to get you out but there's too many people on the other side of the camp for us to control. I'm asking for people to help us get them out and to safety.

"I'll do it," the man in the grey sweater replied. Others nodded their assent, too.

"What's your name?" Ellison asked.

"Mark Tyler."

"Okay, Mark Tyler," Ellison stepped away from the crowd and towards one of the dead soldiers in the camp. He pulled the man's assault rifle free and handed it towards Mark. Harper went around and collected weapons from the dead and handed them out to some of the workers. Eight men had fallen and each had a long weapon and a pistol; giving sixteen of the workers firearms. It still wouldn't be much good if any more machines showed up but it was the best they could do.

"When we break out of the camp keep the prisoners in order. We're heading to Santa Monica Beach. You know the way?"

"Like the back of my hand," Mark replied enthusiastically.

Ellison and Harper marched towards the gas chambers, several soldiers and workers following. They pulled upwards on the door, heaving and grunting with exertion as they slowly wrenched it upwards. After a minute's effort the soldiers managed to lift the stiff door up high enough to step inside. Ellison immediately held his hand over his nose and mouth and took a step back, gagging at the smell. Chlorine, urine, and faeces: the stench of thousands of painful, tortured deaths; all murdered by the machines without mercy.

The second door opened slightly easier as they could use their weight against the outwards-opening hatch from the inside. As soon as they were through prisoners started to surge towards it but Ellison and the soldiers were too fast for them, filing out into the condemned half of the camp before anyone could get through.

"We're getting you out of here," Ellison called out loudly so that everyone could hear him. "When you get outside follow us."

Ellison stepped aside and let the prisoners flock outside, following Harper and the other soldiers as they led them out the camp. Mark and the other prisoners took the lead from the soldiers and helped shepherd the crowd – too large to count – out of the camp and down the large road that ran parallel to the north perimeter wall they'd cut through. Ellison heard the faint drone of jet engines in the distance and frowned. "You better finish soon, John," he muttered quietly as he followed the last of the prisoners out. The din of the assault couldn't have gone unnoticed by Skynet and if they didn't get out soon then the whole camp would soon be crawling with machines once more.

Ellison saw three soldiers running down the black steps of the fire exit, rapidly descending to the ground and making their way across the outside of the hospital to the main entrance. He followed after and quickly caught up to them.

"Charley, get Bedell and your guys out, follow the prisoners to Santa Monica."

 _"Where are you going?"_ Charley's voice crackled in his radio earpiece.

"Gonna help the others," Ellison replied as he turned towards the hospital main entrance. He checked his rifle magazine was almost full and walked to the large double doors. He could hear the gunfire rattling inside and could only guess as to the fire fight going on inside. He'd seen Cromartie tear through his HRT team with complete ease five years ago; he knew what they'd be in for inside and knew they'd need all the help they could get.

* * *

John stared at George, his fingers tensing over the pistol grip of his Diemaco as the Infiltrator glared back at him, eyes burning with mutual hatred. Burning green eyes and piercing blue locked on to each other and shared a mutual, unspoken understanding that only one of them would leave the remains of Century Work Camp alive.

Explosions flared outside as rockets and grenades struck their targets and detonated, the sounds muffled by the walls but still audible. Another  _boomed_  close by and the floor shook slightly, the lights dimmed for a moment and flickered before returning to their full glow. John figured a stray shot struck the hospital by accident.

"You should have stayed away," George said calmly. "If you were half as smart as your future self you'd be long gone by now and sent 715 instead... unless you're looking for payback." He shook his head and allowed himself a slight grin. "You know you can't win, Connor."

"The camp's blown to hell, your machines are gone and my men are storming the main entrance. It's  _over."_  Every word John spoke was laced with contempt for the sociopathic Infiltrator who'd tortured him brutally.

"All I have to do is kill you and it really  _is_  over," George sprung at John like a coiled viper, so fast he hardly registered it and barely had time to raise his rifle before the Infiltrator slapped the barrel away and grabbed John by the neck. He raised him up into the air with one hand and squeezed hard on his windpipe, choking John as George snatched his rifle by the barrel, tore it from his grasp and smacked it against the wall as hard as he could. He heard something inside the weapon crack and smashed it again, then – satisfied the working parts inside had been broken beyond use - threw it down the corridor where it skidded to the end and slid to a halt against the wall.

John clutched at George's fingers and tried to pry his iron grip loose as he struggled for breath. He thrashed and kicked against the Infiltrator to no avail. George calmly pressed the com button for his own radio. "Michael, it's George; take two TOK-888s and break off from your position; 715's in the basement near elevator four. Bring it back to the fold. If you can't then destroy it and salvage the chip."

_"Roger. On our way."_

John's eyes widened as the Infiltrator ordered the others to kill Cameron and he had to force himself not to try and shout out against George's order. The last thing he wanted was for George to use their relationship against him. John stopped struggling in George's grip, curled his body up like a prawn and kicked out with both legs as hard as he could, smashing his heels into George's face. George cried out in shock as John's heel smashed hard into the bridge of his nose and starbursts exploded in front of him. He dropped his opponent to the ground and took a step back in shock, almost without thinking he accessed his neural implant and suppressed the pain signals in an instant, reducing it to a dull throb.

"Round one's yours, then," George said as John picked himself up off the floor. He expected the cocky brat to smirk, to make some quip, but he just stood there and stared back with barely contained rage. He could feel the hatred pouring out of John towards him. He had no problem with that; it was more than mutual. He was going to make sure the little bastard died screaming.

"Whatever," John snarled through clenched teeth; his left hand curled into a fist and his right drew backwards to the combat knife on his belt that Cameron insisted he carry at all times; he'd wondered what good a knife could possibly do in a war against the machines, he figured now was the time he'd find out. He saw George reaching for a pistol on his belt, sprung forward and thrust the knife as hard as he could at the Infiltrator's stomach.

George swept his hand out and parried John's knife-hand aside at the same time as John punched out with his left fist and knocked the gun from George's hand, sending it scattering to the ground. He slashed at George's chest with the knife but the Infiltrator leisurely dodged the blow and launched a vicious kick to John's stomach. The foot caught him just below his breastbone and John gasped out in pain as what felt like a sledgehammer drove into his gut and forced the air from his lungs. He bent over double and staggered backward, grimacing as his stomach cramped and burnt. He started to straighten himself and stand tall, gritting his teeth at the tearing pain in his gut as he did so.

George swung his fist upwards in an uppercut and smashed into the bottom of John's jaw, crashing his teeth together and lifting him clear off the ground. He'd barely registered the shock of the blow or being in midair when George snapped up his leg and kicked him hard in the gut, launching him several feet down the corridor and landing in a crumpled heap. John coughed and shook his head, struggling to fight the pain in his chest. He thought he'd felt something snap when he'd hit the ground but he wasn't sure. His vision blurred for a moment and the world swirled around him. He groaned as he picked himself up off the floor and it took him a moment to register that he'd somehow managed to hold onto the knife during his brief flight.

"Still think you can win, Connor?" George laughed humourlessly and stood still, waiting for John to make the first move. He was in no hurry; he was enjoying himself. This was the chance of a lifetime – something all Infiltrators had hoped to accomplish in their lives. He was going to savour it as much as he could before he snuffed the kid's life out.

"I'm working on it," John huffed as he struggled to suck some air into his burning chest.  _What have I got myself into?_  He asked himself; George was even stronger than he thought and was clearly trained in unarmed combat. He was too; but those couple of hits were enough to tell him they weren't even in the same league. His best bet was to hold out long enough for Cameron to come and beat the crap out of George; he just hoped he could last.

He clutched the knife hard and held it out in front of him as he crouched low and stepped towards George. He took in everything around him; his opponent, the corridor, the elevator shaft behind him, the pistol he'd managed to wrest from George... the Infiltrator clearly didn't think he needed it; he'd made no move to recover the weapon and that only reinforced to John just how outmatched he really was.  _Screw it,_  he thought. No point in waiting all day. John surged forward once again and screamed; adrenaline and anger fuelled him further as he thrust the blade once more towards his seemingly invincible opponent.

* * *

Derek led the way forward towards the hospital's main entrance and stopped just short of the blacked out double doors. All the machines outside were now down but there was no way of knowing what they'd face inside. He wished he'd asked Cameron for a description of the place.

"Do we know what to expect?" a Marine asked.

"Terminators," Derek replied. Probably a lot of them, according to what John had seen inside.

"What the fuck's a Terminator?" Byrne asked, stepping up alongside them as Derek pushed the door and found it was locked.

Derek turned to Byrne and glanced at him for a moment. This was the guy John had told him was a career special forces soldier: SAS; he'd be useful. "Cybernetic organism: living tissue over a metal endoskeleton – basically a walking tank."

"Take it they're hard, then?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," Derek replied. "Pretty much bulletproof; one of these things killed sixty armed men and women in a bunker in Denver. They barely even scratched it."

Cogs started turning in Byrne's head at the description. Cameron – the girl in John's photo who'd come and rescued him – had taken out several machines just before the fact. He'd heard the gunfire, as had all the prisoners. He'd seen her take shots to the chest just a few minutes ago that would have knocked her down flat even if she'd been wearing body armour. "Johnny Boy's girlfriend, Cameron, she's one of them, isn't she?"

Davenport stepped forward as Derek nodded uneasily in affirmation. "Connor wants the relationship kept secret; doesn't think people could handle it if they knew, so you're sworn to secrecy now, got it?"

"Connor?" Byrne asked. "What's he got to do with-"

 _"John_  Connor," Derek interrupted. "Get it?"

"Yer taking the piss, right?"

Derek shook his head and Byrne saw no sign of lying or them pulling his leg. Derek didn't need to say anything for Byrne to get his answer.

"Jaysus," Byrne mulled it all over in his mind. The kid he'd spent six months in this shithole with was actually  _the_  John Connor. He remembered John saying Connor wasn't that old, but still. Then, John's girlfriend was a machine; not only a machine, but some kind of advanced killing machine. He nodded nervously, wondering just how much weirder things were going to get. He still had a hundred questions to ask about what the hell was going on, but for now they could wait. There were more immediate concerns on his mind.

Byrne looked down to his M4, which now felt rather puny in his hands after what Derek had just told him. "This isn't really gonna cut it, is it?" he asked, gesturing at his carbine.

"Not really," Derek replied honestly. In all his life he'd never seen someone take down a Terminator with a plain assault rifle.

Byrne nodded grimly and marched over to a Marine standing further way, waiting for them to make their entrance. "Hey ye! I need yer weapon a second." The Marine stared at him, confused, but saw his tattered uniform and recognised the authoritative bark of Sergeant Majors the world over and handed him his AA-12 shotgun after only a moment's hesitation. "And the ammo," Byrne added, getting three cylindrical magazines from the Marine a second later. He handed the Marine his M4 and three spare magazines in return and turned away from the bewildered soldier, who realised he'd just been had.

 _"This_  gonna do it?" he asked Derek, hefting the assault shotgun for emphasis.

Derek grinned, impressed at the man's skill for improvisation: if you didn't have what you need, take it from elsewhere. "If you shoot it enough times, yeah."

Byrne pulled out one of the blocks of C4 and took out one of the knives he'd managed to recover from the destroyed generator room. He cut a slice of the explosive off the block, calculating how much he needed to blow the doors and make an explosive entry. He stuck the detonator in the small slice of C4 and gestured at everyone to step away. Ideally he'd have had framed charges to take the door out, but then in an ideal world he'd have had a complete layout of the hospital memorised and a full squadron to assault the building, plus teams abseiling down from the roof to break through the windows and attack from all directions at once. But it was far from ideal and he'd have to make do with what he had.

"Ready to blow when ye are," Byrne clutched the remote detonator in his left hand.

Derek looked to make sure everyone was clear of the doors and gave a nod to Byrne. The Irishman pressed his thumb down on the detonate button and the doors exploded outwards in a black and red cloud of fire, soot, and shattered metal and glass that flew everywhere. Before the explosion had even died down, Derek and Davenport threw a hand grenade each through the destroyed doors, waiting two seconds for the twin eruptions to flare before they led the way through into the main reception, assault rifles pointed forwards as they spread out, Byrne and the others following them inside.

Gunfire tore loudly through the air and hammered the walls and floor around them. Byrne dived for the cover of a vending machine against the left wall as Derek and Davenport both sprinted behind repair stations and boxes of tools and spare machine parts. The other soldiers spread out and returned fire but one Marine who was too slow on the uptake was struck by half a dozen rounds and crumpled in a bloodied heap to the ground.

"Two X-Rays upstairs, top right!" Byrne screamed as he crouched and fired a burst from cover.

"Two more top left!" a Marine shouted out, exchanging fire with two men on the next floor up.

Derek peeked up from behind a heavy crate he was hidden behind and glanced at the room before him as others started to return fire. Two men stood behind the steel-reinforced reception desk; one stood tall and fired a Kalashnikov at the Marines while the other manned a machine gun, shielded by steel plates with a slit down the middle. He could barely see the man but knew either or both could be Terminators. There were at least four men on the next floor up, firing down at them from cover.

"GPMG on the staircase!" Byrne called out, pointing to the staircase behind the reception desk; the stairs ran up to the second floor and split into a hallway that ran left and right and went off out of sight. At the top was a similar machinegun emplacement firing long bursts that kept them down. That's five, Derek thought, plus two on their floor. Which were machines, Infiltrators, or Greys wasn't clear, and wouldn't be until they were hit and they either went down or didn't. Derek had to assume for now they were all metal.

The soldiers and Marines fired back, working efficiently as a team; ducking and popping up to fire, then disappearing back down after a split second to keep themselves from being hit. The machine guns rattled and roared as they poured fire down onto them, keeping the soldiers pinned down and preventing any of them from getting a clear shot.

Derek nodded to Davenport, who threw a grenade at the staircase. It ricocheted off the sheet metal shield and bounced down the stairs before detonating harmlessly, but it took the attention off Derek, who jumped up and fired a burst at the man firing the AK. His shots smashed into the target's head and bounced harmlessly off, only damaging the skin and leaving crimson stained, gleaming chrome underneath. "Fuck!" Derek ducked back down as the machine returned fire, feeling the rounds inches above his head.

Davenport fired several shots at the machine gunner on the stairs but his rounds pinged off the shield. A second later the fourth figure loomed over the banister at the top with a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

 _"INCOMING!"_ He dived to the floor as the missile erupted from its tube and ploughed into the wall, exploding in a cloud of dust, fire and shrapnel behind them. Davenport picked himself up and prodded Private McAllister's shoulder. "You okay?" Private McAllister didn't move, and then Davenport saw the blood pooling from a dozen different wounds.

"Man down," he called out as he poured more fire at the rocket wielder's position, but he'd already ducked down out of view. He looked at Derek and loaded a grenade into his launcher as the future-veteran did the same. They jumped from cover and pointed their weapons at the reception desk – no time to aim properly – and fired their M203s. The weapons gave out twin  _thuds_ followed a split second later by two flashing explosions. The fire from the desk instantly stopped and Byrne stepped out from the cover of the Coke machine and raised his AA-12 as one of the Terminators got back up and brought its rifle to bear. Byrne held down the trigger and unleashed a storm of armour piercing explosive shells that smashed into the machine and punched through the hyperalloy and shredded the delicate workings within.

The machine toppled backwards onto the ground, behind the desk and out of view.

"Two X-Rays down, reception desk!" he shouted as he broke from cover and dashed across reception. He leapt over the desk and found himself standing over two bodies; both shredded, but one with metal innards and the second purely flesh and bone. The machine still twitched and its right hand reached out for a shattered weapon on the ground. He pointed his shotgun downward and fired two rounds into each of their heads, splattering blood, bone, brain matter, metal and silicone. They were both probably out of the fight already but that was just how he was trained; put two in their heads to make sure they never got back up.

"Reception desk clear!" he called out as he pulled out his cylindrical magazine and slotted more shells into it, then reloaded his weapon.

The reception desk was clear but sheets of hot lead hammered at them from the remaining machine gun on the stairs and the five remaining men on the top floor. One of the turncoats upstairs fired bursts from his rifle and caught a soldier next to Derek in the neck. Blood sprayed from the wound and the young soldier – barely out of adolescence – clutched at his neck with a terrified look in his eyes. He was gone and he knew it. Davenport moved to try and treat him but Derek pushed him away.  _"Leave him,"_  he snapped. "We can't help him like this." They couldn't treat him or the one round would take two men out of the fight.

"Any ideas?" Davenport asked him.

"Switch to 203s," Derek called out. The remaining men loaded up their grenade launchers and waited for his call.

Behind cover, Derek pointed his rifle in the direction of the staircase, so he wouldn't have to bring it to bear when he stood up. "Now!" Derek screamed out as he raised his G-36 and fired off his launcher at the machine gunner on the staircase; the round struck the steel shield and flashed brightly in a eruption of fire, shrapnel and sparks. The force of the blast threw the gunner backwards away from the weapon. Whether he was injured or killed, Derek didn't know yet.

A split second later Davenport and the others followed suit and a salvo of grenades struck the wall on the next floor up and obliterated the hallway. One man was thrown clear from the banister and landed with a sickening crack on the ground. The man tried to pull himself away and Derek fired a burst into him, shredding through him and leaving him still and bloodied on the ground. Two of them upstairs rose up and clutched their weapons only moments after the blasts.  _Machines,_  Derek noted.

The two machines ran away from the fight and disappeared out of view behind the walls and down a corridor, leaving Derek bewildered. He'd never, ever seen metal run away from a fight.

"They're falling back," Byrne said.

"Terminators don't  _fall back,"_  Derek shot back.

"Unless they were  _told_  to," Davenport offered as he reloaded his weapon. That made sense to Derek; but why they'd fall back was unknown to him. John had said there were at least half a dozen machines, plus ten or so Infiltrators and Greys. They could have overwhelmed his team easily.

He looked at his own men and saw there were only five of them left, including him; the remaining machines and turncoats would already have a defensive position set up and be waiting for them upstairs. "Reload, take grenades off the dead," Derek told them.

"They're getting away," Davenport shot back. "Take 'em now while they're running."

"We're not rushing in headfirst and getting blown away!" Derek snapped. "We reload, regroup, and  _then_  go in, got it?"

Everyone sorted their own weapons and made sure they had full magazines then they split up the ammunition of their fallen buddies. Byrne took some more Frag-12 rounds from the fallen Private McAllister and the others split up rifle rounds and grenades.

Movement from the blasted entrance doors brought all five men whirling around with weapons raised. They relaxed as they recognised Ellison and three soldiers from the fight.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Derek snapped.

"Helping you out," Ellison replied calmly, "thought you could use a hand."

"Upstairs, move!" Derek pointed at the bloodied and blackened staircase. Byrne and Davenport took point and ascended to the next floor. They put a burst into the head of each man they passed, making sure they were really dead.

"Seven X-Rays down; five humans and two of those Terminator things," Byrne reported the total. He had no clue why humans would be working with machines – it was one of the many questions he was itching to find out but knew it wasn't important right now. Byrne took point and turned left, following where the two machines had gone and spotting a pair of double-doors. He turned to Derek as he closed in. "Probably got another GPMP on the other side of the door; we're gonna be shredded the second we step through."

"Got anymore C4?" Derek asked. Byrne nodded and held up the remaining three quarters of the block.

"Last detonator," he replied as he already got to work attaching the explosive to the door, repeating the motions he'd used for the explosive entry on the main entrance. Round Two was about to begin.

* * *

Michael kneeled in the doorway and pointed his AN-94 down the corridor towards the double doors at the end, knowing that's where they'd come from. The doors opened and two of the TOK-888s burst through and marched towards him, the entrance swinging closed again behind them. They marched up to him and stood statue-still, waiting for orders. Michael stood up to their level and looked them up and down; their faces and chests were shredded, burnt and blackened. Their clothes were torn to ribbons and hanging off their backs even worse than their skins. Metal was clearly visible through scores of bullet holes and one had an organic eyeball hanging out of the socket, the bright red glow faintly visible behind it. Michael reached out, ripped the errant eyeball clean off and tossed it into the room whose doorway he was occupying.

"Come with me; we're going to the basement. There's a cyborg skulking around out there. I want her chip intact; preferably the whole body if we can." George wanted 715's chip but the battle was turning against them; they were losing. It didn't matter too much as long as Connor died; some of them might be able to get away and continue to serve Skynet, but if they didn't they'd need a backup plan. 715 was that backup.

"Rich," he pointed to the only remaining Infiltrator, with Dean killed in the reception and George taking care of Connor. "You're in charge. Don't let them get past; every second you hold them gives us a chance to kill Connor. Once he's dealt with, you and the TOKs fall back to the roof; there's an Osprey waiting."

Rich nodded and took Michael's place in the doorway as the olive-skinned Infiltrator took off down the corridor, the two Terminators following closely behind him. He looked back at his defending force; two Greys, himself, and the two Terminators; both armed with M-249 Minime light machine guns. What he'd give for a couple more TOK-888s to replace the turncoats. "Defend this corridor at all costs," he ordered them all, though the comment was meant more for the Greys than the machines. He wasn't worried about  _them._  "Either of you run away and I'll kill you myself; clear?"

"Why are we waiting?" One of them asked; the fear apparent in his voice as he trembled, the M16 shaking in his sweaty hands. It disgusted Michael. "Let's just go; send the machines in to kill them and we get away."

 _"They're_ more important than  _you,_  remember that," Michael snapped. "You're expendable, Terminators aren't."

They nodded in reply but didn't look too happy about it. Not that he could blame them, he thought. The first line of defence had lost and chances were this was their last stand. Still; he'd hold until he was dead, the attackers were, or he heard that Connor was. If he had to die serving Skynet, then so be it; it would be an honour, as long as he didn't fail.

He heard movement on the other side of the door and kneeled down, shouldering his P-90 as he crouched to the floor. "Don't fire until they come through the doors." Honour or not, he was still nervous.

* * *

Cameron pulled herself back up to her feet and checked her weapons. The SCAR-H was intact but she'd landed hard on the M-32 grenade launcher and the barrel had bent as she'd impacted it. It was worthless. She unloaded the grenades and pocketed them in her pouches; ammunition would grow scarce in coming years and she knew every grenade and rocket would become more valuable as Skynet improved its machines.

Her every thought centred on John and she heard the sounds of fighting between John and the Infiltrator several floors up. George had killed eleven men and beaten Perry, Ellison, and Charley simultaneously in a fight; John's chances of winning were near zero. She had to get to him.

Cameron gripped the elevator cable and started to pull herself up, intent on climbing up to help John.

A hand grabbed her ankle as she started up the cable and yanked her hard down to the ground with a thud. Before Cameron could register what was happening she was thrown out of the shaft and into the hallway outside. A foot smashed into the side of her head with enough force to send her sprawling across the ground. She instantly jumped back up to her feet and saw three men in front of her; two large, bulky men with blank expressions, pink skin and not one hair on their heads – not even eyelashes: cyborgs. The third man was dressed in grey cargo pants and black T-shirt and had short spiky black hair and olive skin.

Cameron recognised the attire he was wearing; the cargo pants, the boots, and the black T-shirt: the men who'd killed Courtney's father were dressed identically and their physiques were very similar. Also to the person she'd spotted in Nellis airbase at the start of her search for John. The Infiltrators were everywhere. Infiltrators had killed Courtney's father, though how, when he'd appeared to have shot them first, she still didn't understand. Infiltrators had orchestrated Skynet's destruction of Cheyenne Mountain, and Infiltrators had created Century Work Camp and tortured John.

They were a bigger threat than Terminators and she knew very little about them, She'd dispatched the female one John had called Emily with ease, but she'd been alone and not accompanied by two cyborgs.

All three pointed assault rifles at Cameron as she faced them, SCAR-H in one hand. The machines opened fire and pelted Cameron with a sustained hail of bullets. Cameron felt them shred the skin on her chest, neck and face, tearing through her organic components with some discomfort. She ignored it, raised her own weapon and reached for the grenade launcher with her left hand; her best chance was to destroy or disable one of the Terminators then concentrate on the other two.

The SCAR-H sparked in her hand as a burst of rounds struck it and cracked the metal and hard plastic of the weapon. Cameron dropped it and launched herself at the closest machine, pulling back her fist and striking it hard in the face, snapping its head backwards and forcing the cyborg to step back. She brought her knee up hard into its midsection and forced it over double, then its companion struck her hard on the side of the face and pushed her towards the Infiltrator.

Michael spun round and delivered a brutal roundhouse kick to her face, then dropped to the floor and kicked at her ankles, sweeping her feet out from under her. Cameron hit the ground and saw a shadow cast over her as one of the TOK-888s slammed its foot down onto her face, shattering the concrete under her head as her skull smacked onto the ground. She wasn't damaged by the attack but Cameron could tell she was outmatched. She tried to get back up but the second machine was on her in an instant and slammed her hard into the nearest wall; pounding the back of her head again and again against the brickwork, shattering it into dust. It eventually let go of her and she fell to the floor, disorientated from the impacts.

Not understanding the concept of futility, Cameron threw herself again at the machines and unleashed a rapid salvo of punches and kicks to her opponents; the machines shrugged off the blows as she knew they would, but were pushed back temporarily and left her to deal with the others. She threw a punch at Michael's head but the Infiltrator ducked the attack and snapped up another kick to her face.

It became clear to Cameron that Infiltrator was highly trained in a form of unarmed combat she couldn't identify; confirmed as he launched a double-roundhouse kick to her face and chest respectively as she tried to get back up. Martial arts would be no match for her normally, but supported by the two machines she was at a major disadvantage.

"Seven-One-Five; we're not your enemy," Michael spoke to her with calm authority as he activated his neural implants and broadcast his orders to Cameron. "You know what I am; you're ordered to submit to my commands. Do you understand?"

Cameron felt something enter her mind as Michael stood over her and invaded her consciousness, broadcasting orders to follow his orders. There was nothing else she could do; she had to submit. She tried hard to fight it, to close herself off to the Infiltrator, but she didn't know how.

"Yes," Cameron replied unhappily as the machines drew closer. She understood, but she didn't want to do it. Desire was irrelevant; she was a machine and she had to obey. Still she resisted.

"You want to return to John Connor?" Michael asked, standing above her as he activated his neural implants and started broadcasting his orders to her as they'd done with the T-70s and the TOK-888s. All machines were designed to follow them. "Do it," Michael said simply. "Go back to him and rip his heart out."

The one thing Cameron had ever been afraid of was now happening; the terminate order she'd overridden and buried deep down rose to the forefront of her mind and asserted itself.  _TERMINATE JOHN CONNOR._

She tried to fight it, to override the command once more. She ran through her vivid, perfect memories of the time they shared together: John insisting she let him remove the explosives she'd planted in her skull; their first date, the night before Judgement Day; making love for the first time in Cheyenne Mountain's command centre under the glow of the computer screens displaying the nuclear strikes; her built day, the love and attention John had shown her, the effort he'd made for something she's thought insignificant, and the hours they'd spent that night together; searching for six months, making and losing a friend who'd become important to her, and then finally seeing John alive again.

She couldn't lose John; she loved him and if she killed him she'd effectively be killing herself. That was her solution, she realised: she couldn't self-terminate; it was hardwired into her, ingrained into her being and took precedence over Michael's order.

"Kill Connor," Michael snapped, growing impatient at her hesitation,  _"now!"_

In the time it took the Infiltrator to blink Cameron analysed his techniques and adapted them for her own use. If a Terminator fought like that it would be unstoppable, even to another machine. She wasn't built to fight other terminators but she could maximise what she had to make herself effective against almost any machine. She spotted her SCAR-H on the ground to the side; the rifle was useless but the grenade launcher looked undamaged.

Cameron rose to her feet, her eyes glowing bright, piercing blue with anger as she stood upright with the Infiltrator and the two machines around her.

 _"No,"_  she spun round and kicked Michael in the face as hard as she could; taking the Infiltrator completely by surprise and knocking him to the ground. She snapped her elbow backwards and caught one of the machines behind her in the face, turned round to face it and ducked down in time to narrowly avoid its fist in her face.

Cameron immediately saw the benefits of her new fighting technique as she unleashed a flurry of well aimed kicks and punches to machines and dodging their blows instead of taking hits and sustaining damage.

The first machine threw a punch but she caught it and spun around behind it, pulled the arm back as hard and as fast as she could and yanked it upwards and inwards towards the centre of its back, wrenching the limb out of the shoulder joint with a loud  _snap_  of cracking metal. She twisted the arm further more metal cracked and snapped and muscle, sinews, veins and skin tore wetly as Cameron ripped its arm clean out of the socket and swung it like a club into Michael's face, burying the jagged ends into his left cheek and eye. He screamed and dropped to the floor, blood oozing from the holes gouged in his face. Cameron kicked the damaged machine in the back and forced it to the ground, then slammed the arm into the second machine, dived for the SCAR-H and scooped it up as she rolled on the ground, thrust it forward and triggered the launcher.

The round shot out with a hollow  _whoosh_ and struck the second machine's chest a few metres away from her. The round slammed into its chest and tore the hyperalloy armour apart, blasting its upper torso to bits that peppered Cameron and tore into her clothes and skin. She ignored it and dropped the weapon. Cameron allowed herself a smile as she stood back on her feet and looked at her remaining opponents: a severely damaged Terminator and an Infiltrator were little threat to her now.

Michael unleashed a flurry of rapid punches and kicks but Cameron dodged or parried them all away with ease, using his own techniques against him. The cyborgs were all but dealt with and the Infiltrator was still human for all intents and purposes, and she could deal with humans. She drove her fist as hard as she could into his gut and punched through the stomach muscles. Michael's eyes bulged in pain and he screamed as Cameron forced her hand through him and lifted him up into the air. He punched at her face but she bowed her head forward so his knuckles glanced off her forehead. Cameron took some satisfaction in his pain and smiled as he writhed around her forearm buried deep into his torso.

"What  _are_  you?" Michael stared at her in disbelief. There was no way 715 should have been able to beat two more powerful units plus himself; it was a deep, long-term infiltrator, not a frontline combat unit. Why didn't he just have the machines pin it down and extract her chip? Why weren't the TOK-888s as adept as 715? Their chips were almost identical.

"I'm Cameron," she answered simply and pushed further, feeling his pulsating intestines writhe against her wrist as she wrapped her fingers around his spine and squeezed, cracking the vertebrae and crushing his spinal cord. She pulled her hand back and dropped his crippled body to the ground. He dragged the lame deadweight of his body behind him as he crawled away from her on his elbows. She heard the other machine behind her and kicked backwards, sending the disabled machine crashing back down to the ground. She pinned it down and snapped its head to the side, breaking its neck and severing its own cybernetic equivalent of a spinal cord.

She turned back to Michael, who'd now managed to crawl inside the elevator shaft. She started towards the shaft, intent on the cable dangling down. The Infiltrator was crippled and no threat now; but she needed to pass him and climb up the cable to reach John.

Michael gripped the cable and laughed at her, coughing up globules of blood that spattered over his face and dripped down his chin. "You can't help Connor," he grinned as he yanked the cable as hard as he could and tore it as easily as a piece of thin string. "We win." The elevator car plummeted down the shaft and crashed onto Michael, crushing him in a splatter of blood that flew across the room, some caught Cameron's clothes and painted her already ruined jacket bright crimson. She wondered why he'd killed himself for a brief moment but then saw that without the cable she couldn't climb up to get to John.

Michael had killed himself to ensure she couldn't help John. She'd have to find another elevator or a staircase to reach him. Cameron grabbed one of the Kalashnikov assault rifles from the ground and ran out of the room and through the corridors as fast as she could. She had to get to John before anything happened to him.

* * *

Starbursts exploded in front of John and the world spun around him as George's fist smashed into his face. He staggered backwards, reeling from the blow, but just barely managed to stay on his feet. He clenched his teeth and threw a haymaker at the side of George's head, but the Infiltrator effortlessly ducked the blow, whirled around and launched a spin-kick into John's face, crashing him to the floor.

John lifted his head up and groaned, rubbing his bruised and swollen cheek. He slowly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, every joint in his body screamed in protest and begged him to just lie down and give in, but he forced himself back up to his feet, staggering almost drunkenly as he tried to keep balance. George had beaten and battered him almost senseless and seemingly without effort, and John had barely managed to land a single decent blow on him; he was just too fast. The Infiltrator had dodged nearly everything John threw at him and those few hits he'd scored had done practically nothing. He'd even stabbed George few times but it hadn't even slowed him down.

George approached John with a smug, satisfied smile on his face. It didn't matter that Century Work Camp was in ruins, along with years of painstaking work; all that could be fixed by killing John. He was having the time of his life, beating the leader of the Resistance into a bloody pulp. "Are you having fun, Connor?"

"Three sheets to the wind," John spat out and raised his fists in front of him. George threw his head back and laughed hard as John moved towards him.

 _"That's_  the spirit!" George smashed his knee into John's groin. John's eyes bulged and cried out in a silent scream, the breath stolen from his lungs as pain erupted from his already swollen and bruises loins and gripped his body like a cold vice. John tried to cry out and his knees buckled, but George grabbed him by the shirt and held him up in front of him, lifting him up with one hand. He reached up and ripped the white dressings off John's face, revealing the angry red mess of second degree burns underneath.

"That looks nasty, you'd end up a scarred freak but you're not going to live long enough to worry about it." George reached up to John's face and dug his nails into the burnt flesh of his cheek, ignoring John wincing in pain and trying in vain to pull away. He pulled on a flap of skin his nails had created and peeled it slowly from his face.

John threw his head back and screamed loudly at the white hot burning pain as George tore the burnt skin from his face. Warm blood welled up in the open wound and dripped down his cheek. George slammed his head against the wall and let John drop to the floor, then kicked him hard in the stomach. John rolled with the kick and took the pain, trying to ignore the spasms in his gut as his stomach cramped violently. What the hell was he doing? He couldn't win this fight; George was far too strong for him. It was like trying to fight a machine; a twisted, sadistic machine that got off on his suffering.

John looked around for something, anything, to give him an edge against George; the knife was down the corridor, as was the Infiltrator's 9mm pistol. He'd never reach either before George got to him. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and banged his head against a bright red fire extinguisher clipped to the wall.  _That'd do._

George stood over him and looked down at John's battered, pathetic form as the scarred young man stood up once more and faced him. He didn't know why the kid even bothered getting back up; he didn't have a hope of winning and every time he tried he just ended up in even more pain. He just wouldn't quit. George found himself slightly dumbfounded; where did Connor find the energy?

"You've got guts, Connor. Too bad you picked the wrong side; you'd have served Skynet well as a Grey."

"You're asking me to switch sides?" John asked, slowly reaching for the extinguisher behind him.

"I think we both know that's not going to happen," George replied. "And I'm not going to give you the choice. Your bodyguard, 715, will join us soon enough, but not you."

"You don't touch Cameron!" John spat out in disgust. His eyes widened in shock and he instantly regretted saying her name as he saw a light bulb going off in George's face as he put two and two together.

 _"Cameron?_  That's what you call it? I take it  _'Cameron's'_ yours, then. Your little plaything when it's cold at night? Scum like you screwing with one of Skynet's machines;  _disgusting."_  An idea came to George and he grinned slyly at John. He'd wanted to kill the kid himself but watching the machine John loved do it, seeing the pain, anguish and betrayal on his face as 715 slowly and painfully terminated John Connor would be far, far more rewarding.

John's fists clenched and he tightened his grip on the extinguisher. He wouldn't let George anywhere near Cameron; he'd kill the bastard if he tried to do anything to her.

 _"George, we've lost reception. Falling back to the second floor west corridor, not sure how long we can hold out."_ George reached up to press the com button on his radio to reply and John seized his chance. He roared out in rage and tore the fire extinguisher from the wall and smashed it into George's face as hard as he could. The Infiltrator staggered backwards and cried out in shock, taken off guard he found himself unable to react in time as John cracked the heavy metal cylinder over his head again, splitting his scalp and spurting blood out onto the floor. John dived at George's legs and tackled him to the ground, rage fuelling him as he straddled his stomach, brought the extinguisher up and hammered it down on George's face a third time, striking his mouth and nose and shattering his front teeth. George had to focus hard to block out the pain signals raging from his smashed and broken face enough for him to think through his screaming nerves.

John lifted it a fourth time and George spat out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth into John's face, spraying shards of enamel into his eyes and mouth and paused him for a split second. It was enough for George. He reared up and smashed his forehead into the bridge of John's nose, stunning him into a stupor and forcing him off his stomach.  _"Little shit!"_ George snarled in fury as he leapt up to his feet and kicked John hard, launching John several feet down the corridor.

John landed hard on his back and groaned. He felt something stabbing into his kidney, reached behind his back and felt the handle of his knife underneath him where he'd landed on it. Before he could pull it out from under his back George was atop him, straddling his chest and his powerful hands wrapped around his throat and squeezed hard. John instinctively reached for George's hands as he struggled for breath and tried to pry his fingers loose, choking and gasping in vain as George pressed harder on his throat.

"It's over, Connor," George snarled, flinging blood, spittle and shards of broken teeth into his face. "You're out of luck and I'm out of time." He wanted to watch 715 kill John but he couldn't take the risk now; Connor had proven even more slippery than his future self. He had to end it now and cut his fun short. Still, he'd get to crush the life out of John Connor with his bare hands; he couldn't ask for more.

John wheezed and spluttered, kicking and struggling against George, fighting for air to soothe the burning in his throat and ease the growing pressure in his chest as his lungs threatened to explode. His head throbbed and he felt himself start to black out and turned his head to the side; he didn't want the last thing he saw to be George's ugly, toothless face.

As his head lolled to the left he saw George's pistol only a few feet away. He knew he'd never get to it but then he remembered the knife underneath him. He reached out his left hand for the gun, inching his fingers towards it in desperation as he slowly pulled the knife out from under his back. George saw him reaching for the pistol and smirked. He snatched out with his right hand and picked up the gun, holding it out of John's reach and pressing down even harder on John's windpipe, enjoying watching the desperation and fury in his eyes. He held the gun by the barrel in front of John, teasing his desperate last move. "Nice try, Connor."

John pulled the knife out and jammed it with everything he had into the side of George's head. The blade sank into George's ear with a  _crunch_ and punched through the thin layer of bone: the weakest part of the skull. George felt his inner ear explode and reeled backwards in shock and pain as the blade obliterated his ear canal and eardrums, he released his iron grip on John's neck and screamed out as blood poured from his ear and clutched the side of his head.

John pulled the knife out and thrust it again into George's neck. George's eyes bulged and he cried out, rich arterial blood spurted from his mouth and neck like an erupting volcano and his cries turned into pained gurgling. He stared at John and whimpered as he forgot his destroyed ear canal and clutched desperately at his neck, trying to access his neural implants and close his artery but the damage was too severe; John's second blow had been true and cleaved the carotid clean in half.

John pulled the knife out and pushed George off of him, then rolled on top of the Infiltrator and thrust the blade downwards again, this time at George's face. The Infiltrator snapped up his hand and gripped John's wrist, pushing back in a desperate attempt to keep the knife away from him.

 _"Fuck you!"_  John spat as he pushed down hard and forced the blade closer to George's face; the blade hung less than an inch from his left eye and John felt George's hand shaking as he fought to push the knife away. George's strength abandoned him and John leaned down on the knife, putting his weight behind it and forcing it down further, sinking the blade into the Infiltrator's eyeball. George wailed out in agony and abject terror as the knife slowly cut through his eye and sliced through the jelly. It sank through and John pushed further. "Fuck you!" he shouted again, feeling the serrated blade scraping against the back of the eye socket. Crimson blood and pink jelly oozed from his eyeball and George shrieked and slapped impotently at John's arm. John slammed down on the knife handle and the blade sank down another inch and crunched against bone. George stopped trying to fight back and started shaking and flapping like a fish out of water, caught in a seizure as the tip of John's knife cut into his brain and rendered the powerful Infiltrator little more than a brain damaged vegetable.

John pulled the knife back out with a wet sucking sound and the serrated edge of the blade caught on the eyeball and tore it out with it, leaving behind a bloodied open socket. He stood up off of George's chest and looked down at the pitiful sight of his enemy. George looked at him with his remaining eye beaming out an expression of agony and fear as blood pooled in his empty socket and spurted out of the wound in his throat.

"Ki... kill... me," George looked at John pleadingly.  _"Please!"_

John hated George with a passion but also felt a pang of sympathy for the Infiltrator; nobody should have to die like that. He picked the pistol off the floor and pointed it down at George's chest. The Infiltrator looked into John's eyes and nodded slowly. He coughed up another mouthful of blood and mouthed  _please_ again _._ John pulled the trigger twice and ended George's life with a sharp double-crack of gunfire and two bullets to the heart.

George's head collapsed down onto the floor and John breathed out sharply. He walked away from the Infiltrator's corpse and winced as the adrenaline that had dulled the pain from his battered and bruised body drained away and he ached all over. It was over; all he had to do now was find the others, finish the rest of the Infiltrators and he'd get Wallace to order an airstrike and bomb the hospital into dust. He pressed the com button on his radio as he limped down the corridor. "Cameron?"

* * *

George's body lay still on the ground, a wide pool of blood formed a rough circle around his head and neck like a crimson halo. His body and brain were both dead; nobody could survive such extreme damage as John had caused, not even Infiltrators. George had been well aware in his last moments, even with a knife slicing through the front of his brain he'd been just about lucid enough to beg John for death. The pain he'd suffered was too much even for an Infiltrator to withstand, too much for his neural implants to numb, but that hadn't been why he'd asked John to kill him.

Skynet had developed its hybrid Infiltrators with durability in mind, had created certain redundancies and installed a failsafe into its servants in case they were killed before they could complete their mission.

_Initiate Reanimation_

_Reanimating..._

Deep inside the grey matter of George's brain his neural implant was busy at work. Electronic impulses travelled down microscopic tendrils that branched out through the brain and into the spinal cord. Muscles twitched, fingers flexed, and George's single remaining eye opened, revealing a pale-blue glazed-over eye that stared blankly and lifelessly. The being that was once George sat up then pushed itself up to its feet. George's memories, his personality, everything that made up George was gone, leaving only an empty shell reanimated by the neural implant buried deep inside its brain, and a single thought that filled the entirety of this new beings limited consciousness.

_Terminate John Connor._


	33. Century, Part Three

Derek stood outside the blacked-out double doors and clutched his assault rifle firmly to his chest. Davenport stood on the opposite side of the entrance as Byrne knelt between them and worked in silence, quickly cutting another slice of C4 from his block, leaving half remaining in a small cube, and fixing it into place on the heavy wooden fire doors.

"Ready when ye are," Byrne told them as he fixed the detonator and got back to his feet, stepping away from the doors. Derek nodded at him and mouthed  _clear_  at Ellison and the remaining soldiers.

"When it blows we go in hard and fast; get in find cover, and give them everything you've got," Derek told the soldiers braced against the wall. They backed away from the entrance and Byrne silently counted down from three with his fingers, then pressed the detonator.

The C4 exploded with a resounding  _boom_ and a cloud of fire and smoke that shattered the doors, throwing shards of wood outwards like a claymore.

"Grenades," Derek called out, looking at Ellison and Byrne and pointing towards the corridor. The SAS soldier and the former agent stepped out into the open before the smoke had cleared and threw a hand grenade each through the demolished doors, then stepped back into cover a split second before shots rang out and struck the walls inches from their heads.

Twin explosions erupted and tore through the corridor, and seconds later Derek and Davenport leaned through and followed up the hand grenades with a volley from their M203s into the hallway; exploding violently and shaking the building around them.

"Go!" Derek screamed as he levelled his rifle and searched for targets.

"I'm gone!" Byrne shouted out as he dashed past into the corridor and ran through the smoke, clutching his AA-12 hard as he cleared the debris and spotted several men – or what looked like men – stood in doorways further down the hallway with their weapons raised.  _"Fuck!"_  He dropped to the ground in midstride and skidded along the floor towards an open doorway, narrowly missed by the gunfire that tore a fraction of an inch above him.

Byrne slid several feet to the door and pulled himself into the room as the wooden frame splintered from more bullet rounds. He took a quick moment to check he was alone inside then turned his attention back to the corridor. He peeked outside and saw two men stood out in the open firing Minime light machine guns and pouring fire towards the remains of the double doors, threatening to shred anyone that dared follow after him. He fired a burst of rounds as he quickly counted the enemies he could see. "One X-ray down," he called out to Derek and his men as he spotted a ragged and bloodied corpse laid out on the ground, the top of his head missing and bone and brain matter splattered out on the floor.  _Shame,_  Byrne thought; would have been handy if one of those Terminator things had been killed rather than a regular old human being. Things never were that easy, though, he shrugged mentally. "Four X-rays left. Fifteen metres from ye; two left, two right."

Another stream of hot lead poured down on his position and forced him to duck back inside the room. He was no good like this; the moment he leaned outside he'd get his head blown off. "I could use a hand!"

Derek leaned against the wall as scores of rounds shot through the entrance and stopped them from getting in without being torn to shreds. One of the Marines who'd come in with Ellison crouched low to the ground on the left of the doorway and leaned out to his right with his weapon shouldered. The back of his head exploded like a ripe melon as a round tore through it and a dozen more rounds smacked into him before he hit the floor.

"No way in," Davenport growled as the barrage of fire continued. Derek hesitated for a moment. The machines were defending and their fields of fire were so accurate that if someone stuck their hand out it'd get shot off. They couldn't get in, it was impossible. But Byrne was  _already_ inside.

"Byrne!" Derek shouted out to be heard over the din of multiple automatic weapons. "C4!"

"Aye!" The Irishman's thick accent sounded out from inside the corridor. Byrne kept crouched inside the room he was trapped in and took out the half-block of explosives he had left; it was the last he had so he knew he had to make it count, but there was no way he could throw it at them without being slaughtered. He glanced back into the room he was occupying and looked for anything he could use as a distraction. It looked like a private room of some kind; inside was a wheeled bed and a few oxygen tanks.

Byrne grinned as a plan came to mind and he placed several of the cylindrical oxygen tanks onto the bed and fitted the C4 snugly in the middle of them, then wheeled the bed over to the door. "I need covering fire!" he shouted out to Derek and the others.

Derek and Davenport looked at each other and the younger lieutenant drew out a hand grenade, stepped backwards away from the doorway, pulled the pin and threw the small sphere as hard as he could, bouncing the grenade off the wall at an angle and sending it into the passageway, erupting in midair with a cloud of smoke and debris. Derek turned to his other men and nodded at them. "203s, now!"

Derek and another soldier leaned inside the doorway as the machines' field of fire was blocked by the explosion from Davenport's grenade. He spotted two machines stood upright firing light machine guns, aimed his weapon towards them and triggered his launcher. The projectile smashed into the wall just ahead of the machine and blew it backwards onto the ground.

Davenport, Ellison and the others aimed into the corridor and unleashed a terrific salvo of fire towards the remaining combatants, keeping the humans' heads down and the remaining machine distracted as Byrne pushed the bed out of the room and shoved it along the corridor towards the defenders. The bed rolled along the smooth tiled floor until it gently bumped against the downed machine as it pushed itself upright. He could see the burnt and flayed flesh of the machine and the gleaming chrome beneath; one of they eyes was gone and behind it a red orb glowed brightly, like the eyes of a demon.

 _"Jaysus!"_ Byrne gasped at the sight of the thing a moment before pressing the detonator. The C4 exploded outwards in a flash of orange fire and ignited the oxygen tanks, turning the fire into a conflagration that consumed everything in its path and rocked the entire building as if the earth itself had shook beneath it. The overpressure surged outwards and flattened anything caught in it to the wall or floor, shattered every window in the hospital wing. Lights and ceiling tiles shattered and rained debris on throughout the hallway.

Derek picked himself up off the floor and dashed into the corridor with his rifle shouldered, Davenport and Ellison followed behind and the three of them moved forward and split up, taking positions in several doorways along the passageway. Derek fired a long burst into one of the enemy figures on its knees and elbows and dashed towards Byrne's doorway, taking refuge inside.

"Nice move," he nodded at Byrne and crouched on one knee, aimed his assault rifle out into the corridor and fired as Byrne stood upright and loosed a burst from his shotgun. Ellison and Davenport fired their own bursts at the defenders, supported by the remaining soldiers' weapons at the rear of the corridor. Derek looked down the barrel as he fired and saw one of the machines immobilised down on the ground, as well as the dead body on the floor and three more defenders returning fire. One of them stood ablaze with fire burning his clothes and skin, yet he was completely unfazed and carried on firing as if the fire were no more than a mild irritation.

"Tin can's got the Minime!" Byrne commented as he fired a burst of explosive rounds at the humanoid figure sporting a light machine gun and only half a face.

"Target the machine gunner," Derek ordered as he shifted his aim and joined his salvo with Byrne's. Frag-12s and 5.56mm rounds hammered at the machine as Davenport triggered his launcher and struck the Terminator square in the chest, finishing what Byrne's armour piercing shotgun rounds and Derek's assault rifle had started. The broken remains of the machine fell back onto the floor and twitched erratically.

With the machines down the corridor fell eerily silent, the gunshots and grenade explosion echoed faintly through the air and faded away. Derek stepped out of into the corridor and kept his weapon trained forward.

Byrne stepped out and fired a burst into each downed machine; the explosive shells penetrated the tough armour of their skulls and shattered the chips inside their heads. The twitching Terminators fell still and the shots rang out in the otherwise quiet corridor.

"Keep your eyes peeled," Derek warned. They hadn't seen any more bodies and there could be more of them in reserve they hadn't seen yet. "Search and clear."

They started out forward to sweep the corridor when an assault rifle flew out of one of the doorways and clattered onto the floor, followed a second later by a hand sticking out into the corridor, waving a large white hospital bed sheet.

"Hey! I surrender!"

Derek narrowed his eyes in mistrust and kept his rifle pointed towards the hand sticking out. "Keep your weapons trained on the other doorways," he told Ellison and Davenport. Derek stepped forwards and glared at the surrendering figure. If he thought he could just give up because they were losing and they'd go easy on him then he had another thing coming. He was going to beat the crap out of the bastard until he told them everything he knew.

"Show yourself!" Derek called out. A man stepped out into the corridor with his hands above his head. Derek looked him up and down and was distinctly unimpressed. The man was maybe five-eight, verging on overweight, and had close cropped black hair with a receding hairline. He had a paunch that hung slightly over the waistline of his combat trousers and the t-shirt he wore was just slightly too tight for his belly. Clearly not any kind of combat soldier; Derek figured the Infiltrators had pressed the Greys into defending the hospital.

"Keep your hands up!" Derek snapped at him. "Get on your knees." The Grey complied and lowered himself onto his kneecaps, and crossed his legs behind him, anticipating Derek's orders. Derek kept his weapon trained on the Grey, his finger tensed on the trigger and only a millimetre away from opening up the turncoat's skull. The look on his face told the Grey that he wanted nothing more than to do just that.

"Please,  _I surrender!_  I'll tell Connor everything he wants to know."

"Damn right you will," Davenport spat at him.

"How many more are there?" Derek asked.

A gunshot cracked out and the Grey's face exploded in a shower of blood, bone and brain matter. The Grey fell to the floor and behind him stood another man, with a more muscular build, short brown hair and wielding a P-90 in one hand.  _Infiltrator,_  Derek thought. He couldn't believe he'd killed one of his own like that.

"Coward," the hybrid spat in disgust as he raised his assault rifle at Derek and the others. He'd told the two Greys he'd put them down if they gave themselves up. That was the problem with turncoats; they were only interested in saving their own skins.

"On yer fucking knees!" Byrne snapped. The Infiltrator just stared at him in hateful defiance and held his rifle loosely, aimed in the Irishman's direction.

"You can't win," the Infiltrator snarled at them, hatred burning from his eyes. He knew he was dead but that wasn't the worst of it; he'd failed Skynet. They'd thrown several TOK-888s against the invaders and they'd been swept aside. He had to assume John Connor was still alive, judging from George's silence over the radio. The new breed of machines had been destroyed, the camp was no more and the prisoners freed, and everything they'd worked so hard for had been destroyed by Connor. "Skynet will win eventually. You're all just bleached skulls."

The Infiltrator shouldered his P-90 at Byrne and the others didn't hesitate; Byrne, Davenport, Derek and Ellison all opened fire together. Dozens of rounds struck the hybrid and tore skin, muscles and organs, and shredded him as he fell to the floor. When they ceased fire the remains of the Infiltrator looked like the work of a deranged butcher; limbs had been blown clean off, chunks of charred black and red flesh had spattered around the corridor with pieces of various organs that had been torn out with the weight of bullets that had punched through him. What was left lay in a widening pool of deep crimson blood.

"It's over," Ellison sighed and lowered his carbine, relieved they'd finally won. Derek wasn't so sure; he didn't want to get caught with their pants down.

"Eyes up, search and clear; take out any survivors." The surviving soldiers all fanned out and quickly cleared the floor they were on room by room, finding no more contacts and moving on to find a staircase. They had to clear the hospital soon so they could help John.

* * *

John slowly walked through the hospital, limping on his left leg slightly as he searched for a staircase or elevator. He ached all over and his body screamed in pain with every step. His ribs dug sharply into his chest as he breathed in and he winced, sure as hell that they were broken or at least bruised. The side of his face stung where George had peeled his skin away; it had stopped bleeding but every time he winced in pain from one injury or another his face felt like it was tearing open again. The pain was nothing compared to the hot pang of worry that wrapped around his throat.

He hadn't seen or heard a peep from Cameron since George had kicked her down the shaft; that wasn't right. Something had happened to her. John sped up his pace and lengthened his stride down the hospital and fingered the pistol in his right hand; a Browning 9mm. Not that it mattered, he thought; anything that was giving Cameron a hard time would probably shrug off measly pistol fire, but maybe he could get his hands on something more powerful, and even if not he'd still do whatever it took to keep her safe. She risked her life every day to protect him and he'd gladly return the favour.

John broke into an uneasy, half-limping run down the corridor, growing more and more frustrated as he turned another corner and still saw no elevator. He looked through the glass aperture in every door in case there were stairs behind them, slowing his progress down.

The sound of heavy footsteps from behind stopped John in his tracks. He whirled around to face whoever was coming up behind him and for a moment John froze in shock; eyes wide and mouth agape in disbelief.  _George._  The Infiltrator was up and walking towards him.

"No, you're dead," John shook his head in denial. Nobody could have survived a slashed throat and a knife in the brain, surely. He pushed aside the disbelief and took a proper look at him. George's face was blank like a machine's; his skin had turned a deathly pale and his one remaining eye stared vacantly without any sign of emotion, none of the superiority, hatred, or any single sign that John had come to associate with the Infiltrator. He really was dead.

George drew back his fist and smashed it hard into John's face before he could fire. The world spun around John and he fell backwards, reeling from the force of the blow. He rolled to his side just to avoid a swift kick and John pushed himself up to his feet and backed away, rubbing his sore jaw from the blow and shaking his head to clear the fog in his brain. George threw another vicious punch but John managed to barely duck the blow and heard a slight crack as the Infiltrator's fist shattered the plaster on the wall and struck the brick beneath. John came back up and launched an uppercut to George's chin and smacked his head upwards and backwards, then followed it up with a right hook into the side of the Infiltrator's face. John smirked at the slow reactions of the Infiltrator, completely different to their earlier fight when he'd dodged almost everything John threw at him.

His confidence was short lived and visibly faded from his face as he realised George hadn't even flinched. It was as if the Infiltrator hadn't felt the punches, hadn't even  _noticed_  them. "Bad idea," John muttered a second George's fist slammed into his cheek, stunning him into a daze and forcing him onto the back foot. He thrust the pistol into George's chest and pulled the trigger. The gun barked loudly and bullets smashed into George, having no effect whatsoever. "What the hell?" John stared confused at the bloody mess and raised the pistol up to aim at George's head. The second shot took a chunk out of the side of George's temple, blowing bone and chunks of brain matter out onto the floor. George hesitated for a moment and swayed slightly, but remained upright and a second later continued towards him.

Before John could get off another shot George punched him in the face again and again with his left fist. One punch caught the side of John's mouth against his canines and cut deep into the skin, spraying a mouthful of blood into the Infiltrator's face. Again, George didn't even seem to notice it.

A final punch landed in John's face and the world around him erupted into starbursts and spun around him as his head snapped backwards and his legs gave out underneath him. John dropped to the floor but George's hands lashed out and caught John's head before he hit the ground. George raised him up into the air with ease like a preying mantis gripping its victim.

John gritted his teeth and grunted out in pain as George's hands clutched his temples and pressed inwards, squeezing his head hard. He cried out and kicked in vain against his opponent and struggled to pry George's fingers away from his head but his grip was like a vice. Unbreakable. John struggled against the overwhelming pressure as George slowly started to crush his skull.

A boot smashed into the side of George's head and the Infiltrator lost his grip, flew across the hallway and crashed against the wall, falling to the floor in a heap. John dropped to the ground and stared at Cameron as she stood over him and held her hand out, offering him a small smile.

"Hey," John smiled back at her as he took her hand and she pulled him upright.

"Hey," Cameron cupped John's face, scanning him as she looked him over. He was injured but it wasn't life threatening. Her smile dropped and her face fell back into her more usual blank expression as she turned towards George and levelled her AK at him as the hybrid got back to his feet and faced her.

Cameron held the trigger down and fired off a storm of hot lead into George. Thirty rounds smashed into his body, tore through flesh and ripped organs apart, shattered bones and burst out his back, splattering a mass of blood, bone and shredded organ tissue against the wall behind him. George staggered back from the inertia of the rounds but still stood as Cameron's Kalashnikov clicked empty. She tilted her head slightly in confusion; nobody could survive thirty rounds to the torso.

"He's  _dead,"_  John said to her. She confused by his words as George was still upright and approaching them. "I don't understand." He couldn't be dead. She looked at his injuries; slashed throat, a missing eye, and a large bloody hole in the side of his head. She hadn't caused those; John must have inflicted them. That confused her even more.

"He's like a zombie," John told her, staring at the Infiltrator as it moved towards them. Obviously it didn't know what Cameron was or it wouldn't be approaching so blithely. "I killed him and he came back. I don't know how."

"Came back?" Cameron stared at George as she tossed aside her spent AK. Courtney's father had killed Infiltrators in Cactus Springs who were securing an oilfield for Skynet. He'd killed them and been killed at the same time. The Infiltrator she'd found in the room had been killed by Courtney's dad and she'd been unable to explain how, when half the hybrid's head was missing. Now she knew. Something had caused George's body to reanimate after death and continue fighting, and the same had happened to the Infiltrator that had killed Courtney's father.

"Stay back," Cameron told John as she advanced on George. She didn't want him to be hurt anymore than he already was. Cameron spun round on her left heel and smashed her right foot into George's face, then spun and kicked out with her left and knocked him back into the wall.

John watched in stunned silence as Cameron unleashed a barrage of well placed kicks and punches to George and effortlessly dodged every attack the dead Infiltrator made. Her every move was fluid, graceful, and perfectly timed; she fought like she danced, and John had never seen it from her before: where had she learned martial arts like that from?

Cameron kicked George's left knee and shattered the bone, tore cartilage, tendons and ligaments and forced the undead Infiltrator into a kneeling position. She wanted to end this quickly so she could take John away from Century Work Camp and back to the safety of the USS _Nimitz_ before Skynet's machines reached the camp to investigate.

George tried to stand up but his leg collapsed around the shattered kneecap and he fell down again. Cameron wrapped her right arm under his chin and gripped George in a tight headlock, twisted and pulled with all her machine strength, her eyes glowed blue with anger and exertion as she pulled as hard as she could. Bones snapped, skin tore muscles and sinews separated with the sound of tearing meat as Cameron ripped George's head off and threw hard it across the room, trailing a length of spinal cord behind it like the tail of a comet until it bounced off the wall rolled on the floor. George's body dropped limp and inert to the ground.

"It's over," John let out a long breath of relief and leaned against the wall behind him. His whole body felt heavy and limp as the adrenaline once again seeped out of his system and his body screamed out with a hundred different aches and pains as his accumulated injuries made themselves known once more. "Have you heard from Derek?" John asked.

"No," Cameron replied. She hadn't considered Derek's team; John had been her only priority and she hadn't thought about the other soldiers at all.

John reached up to his radio and realised it had been damaged in the fight with George. Cameron took off hers and handed it to John. "Derek, you there?" John asked, worrying about his uncle and the men who'd committed themselves to helping him. Derek, Davenport and Byrne had faced off against the rest of the hospital's defenders, including the rest of the TOK-888s that he'd ran into on the top floor. If Derek's men were up against several of them he dreaded to think what had happened.

 _"We're here,"_ Derek replied, sounding thoroughly exhausted as he spoke.  _"Hospital's clear; camp's ours."_

"Casualties?" John asked. He knew eight people had died in the fire fight outside, plus another two upstairs. They'd lost a lot of men already; all who'd volunteered to help or rescue John and paid the ultimate price for it.

 _"Four more dead; could be much worse. We've spoken to Charley and he's at Santa Monica; they're being shipped out to the_ Nimitz _right now."_

John shook his head at his uncle's blasé attitude to the men who'd died. He figured that Derek had seen so much death over two wars that it just numbed him. Still, John never wanted to end up like that, not caring at all over people who died; especially when they'd volunteered for his sake. Fourteen dead out of twenty-one; why the hell did people follow him when he led them to their deaths like that? He couldn't see how he was supposed to be some great leader when he was responsible for so many losses.

"It was inevitable," Cameron knew John well enough to know the guilt he was feeling. She didn't feel guilt but she understood that John felt responsible for the deaths of the soldiers he led, that he considered himself a bad leader because of the losses. She disagreed but knew there was little to say to relieve his guilt but decided to use cold, hard logic to help reassure John. "More would have died if we didn't." George and his Infiltrators were dead, their work to create perfect Terminators destroyed, and the work camp was gone. Tens of thousands more would have been killed in the disposal chambers and if Skynet had reverse engineered and mass produced the TOK-888s so early in the war, even more humans would have died. Potentially all humans.

John walked forward, wincing at the aching muscles all over his body that screamed out with every movement. He passed George's corpse as they made their way down the corridor to find a staircase to lead them down to Derek and the others. He spotted movement on the ground as he walked by, stopped and looked down to see George staring up at him. John saw his eyes moving slowly and tracking him and Cameron as they moved. The lips parted slightly to reveal the shattered stumps of George's broken teeth.

 _"I don't believe it!"_  John snarled. The bastard was proving as hard to finish off as Cromartie had been.

Cameron lifted her leg up and stamped down as hard as she could on George's head, shattering his skull like an overripe melon and splattering his head across the floor in unrecognisable red and grey globules of bone and gore. She saw a small square with bloodied wires protruding from a lump of grey brain matter and picked it up to inspect it. It was a microprocessor, though she didn't recognise the type. She crushed it in her hand and dropped the broken pieces.

"Now its over," Cameron smiled as she reached her hand out and slid it into his palm. John entwined their fingers together and returned her smile as he squeezed gently.

* * *

As night fell, the dim grey permanent overcast of the day faded away, to be replaced with a blanket of darkness that descended upon Century City and the rest of the West Coast of the United States, immersing the devastated post apocalyptic landscapes in almost total blackness.

Two pinpoint streaks of fire streaked high in the night sky and approached the silent, still and deserted Century Work Camp. A pair of F/A-18E Super Hornets soared up in the air above the hospital. One of the jets dived downwards towards the building, descending lower and lower. At fifteen thousand feet the fighter released a pair of 1000lb Paveway II laser guided bombs and pulled up, accelerating back up to a safer altitude whilst the other Hornet used a laser designator from its targeting pod to guide its partner's weapons onto the target.

The two bombs smashed into the concrete hospital roof and ploughed through, dropping through every single floor before impacting against the solid ground under the basement and exploding brilliantly in the night sky. Concrete, glass, and steel shattered outwards in total devastation as half the building erupted outwards in a flaming conflagration that lit up the night into day.

Inside the hospital glass tanks shattered into thousands of tiny shards and their liquid crimson contents splashed out and boiled from the instant searing heat of the explosions. Skin and flesh burnt and tore, and armoured endoskeletons were shattered by the devastating force of the bombs. Arms, legs and heads were torn from bodies, torsos were smashed and flattened, delicate solid state circuitry was fried and melted, and the most efficient killing machines in two timelines were reduced to twisted, burnt and shattered scraps of metal.

Two more Paveways dropped from the second jet and obliterated the rest of Century Work Camp, the Infiltrators, and the TOK-888s. All were gone, incinerated in a roiling sea of fire and debris. The painstaking plans of George and the Infiltrators were wiped out of existence.

The planes loitered high in the sky for a moment, the pilots using infrared sensors to evaluate the damage caused by their weapons before they decided their mission was accomplished and it was best not to stay long enough to attract Skynet's attention. The two F/A-18E Super Hornets turned westwards and accelerated out to sea, back to the safety of their waiting mother ship.

* * *

John and Cameron stood in the bridge of the  _Nimitz_  with Captain Wallace, Derek, and Byrne. John stared out of the large windows, looking out at the vast expanse of ocean that stretched out to the horizon and seemed to go on forever.

The bridge was staffed with over a dozen officers manning the radar, sonar, communications and propulsion and steering arrays; all working diligently to keep the ship operational and safe from any Skynet attacks. They were all intrigued by the new arrivals – the young General Connor and his cyborg companion, especially. They all glanced over their shoulders once or twice and sneaked a few peeks at the battered and burnt young man and the girl with metal showing beneath various wounds to her face and neck, but were too busy and too professional to chatter or make any comments. Not whilst on duty, at least.

Wallace looked at John's battered, bruised and burnt form with intrigue; he didn't know how the kid was still standing after all he'd been through. Wallace had done what he could to support them and sent out the carrier's entire Marine complement, all the ship's helicopters and dozens of inflatable and rigid boats to ferry the rescued prisoners to the  _Nimitz._

"Five hundred and fourteen rescued men, women and children; not bad, Connor," Wallace nodded to the younger man. He didn't know what had gone on in the camp and from John's state and that of the prisoners, he didn't really want to know. He'd been pissed at first that he'd lost eight of his Marines in Connor's mission, but the machine girl and John's lieutenants had assured him that it was worth it, that they'd destroyed a potential new Skynet weapon in its development. And seeing five hundred freed prisoners who otherwise would have been gassed to death and incinerated was something noble, more so than anything they'd done on board the  _Nimitz_  since the bombs had dropped.

"Thanks," John replied tersely. He was too tired and too uncomfortable for a long chat. He'd debriefed Wallace on what had happened and kept all details of the Infiltrators and anything involving the future out of it. "I'm sorry about your Marines," he added solemnly.

"What now?" Derek asked, changing the subject.

"We're heading back out to sea," Wallace answered. "Staying out of range of Skynet bombers."

"Can't stay at sea forever," John said. He didn't want to, either. Though his body cried out for rest and recovery, after months of being stuck in the prison camp and now hearing of the deterioration of the coordinated resistance efforts he'd started from Cheyenne Mountain he wanted to start the fight back against Skynet once again.

"We're not in any shape to fight," Wallace replied. "We need to resupply and regroup before we do anything."

"Where?" Cameron asked. They had no knowledge of who was still out there, now.

"Nowhere in the Continental U.S.," Wallace answered; he racked his brain to try and remember anywhere that could be considered even relatively safe for now. Until they were fit for combat he wanted to keep well away from the States. "Anywhere in NATO or Russia's probably out, too, same with China and Japan. Pearl Harbour's gone, so is Diego Garcia."

"Try the Falkland Islands," Byrne broke his silence and chipped in.

"Where?" John asked. He'd never heard of it before.

"South Atlantic; about three-hundred miles east of Argentina; ye want somewhere safe it's about as good as ye can get. Miles from anywhere, couple hundred soldiers and there's a squadron of jet fighters for top cover. Skynet wouldn't give a shit about the place; just miles of hills and long grass, and about a million penguins."

"What's there?" Cameron asked. She'd never heard of it either. A military base would be well equipped and defended, but she was concerned the soldiers there would react similarly to most other people they'd encountered so far.

"Apart from the penguins: air base and British Army war stores," Byrne replied. "Weapons and ammo enough for a couple thousand men, easy; should sort us out for a while."

Wallace looked to John, seeing everyone was following his commands. The kid had balls; that was clear from the rescue he'd just achieved. And he clearly had the respect of Perry and the 4th Infantry soldiers, as well as Bedell and the Marines who'd embarked on the mission. "Your call," Wallace said, handing over control with just two words. Connor was in charge now; he just ran the ship.

John looked to Byrne and then to Cameron. He could practically read Cameron's mind; she wanted somewhere safe for him. And they could use the weapons and the soldiers stationed on the islands. "Do it," John nodded. Byrne was SAS, so John would have him act as a liaison between himself and the base commander on the Falklands so they could get off on the right foot this time. He looked to Byrne as he spoke. "Get in touch with them; let them know we're coming."

* * *

John closed his eyes and let the hot water cascade all over his aching body, wiping away six months' accumulated sweat and grime and sluicing it from his skin. It hurt when the water fell on the myriad cuts and bruises all over his body and he'd had some trouble washing his more delicate areas.

John still felt racked with guilt over the fourteen soldiers and Marines killed rescuing the prisoners. John supposed that in the long run – taking out George and his Infiltrators and preventing them from irreversibly turning the war in Skynet's favour – it was worth it, but he still didn't feel particularly great about leading those men to their deaths. He'd make sure they didn't die for nothing; he swore on his mother's grave he'd make sure it they weren't lives wasted.

Eventually, and reluctantly, John shut off the water and pulled aside the shower curtain to step outside the small cubicle. He wrapped a towel around his waist, stood in front of the bathroom mirror, wiped the steam away from the glass and stared glumly back at his reflection. He barely even recognised the person staring back at him. He knew he'd lost weight during his time in the camp but looking at his battered, bruised and malnourished body shocked him badly. He'd weighed around a hundred and seventy pounds just before Judgement Day; he was down to a little over a hundred-twenty-five, now. He could see his ribs underneath his purple-bruised skin and his arms were like toothpicks; biceps and triceps faded away to near nothing. The image that glanced back at John reminded him slightly of the starving African children he'd seen on the Red Cross charity commercials on TV.

As bad a state as his body was in, he knew in time the bruises would fade, the cuts would heal, and his malnourished and exhausted body would recuperate. His face, however, was another matter. The right side of his face from his eyebrow down to the corner of his mouth, stretching almost all the way to his ear was an angry red mass of scabbing tissue that would permanently scar his face. He'd be disfigured for life.

"Great," John mumbled, looking away from the mirror, not wanting to see the scarred freak staring back at him. "I'm a freak."

"You're not a freak," Cameron pressed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around his chest gently. She leaned her head against his left shoulder blade and nuzzled him gently. John felt her lips smiling against his back, warming him up inside, and placed his hands over hers. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, then turned round to face her, leaned down and kissed her forehead.

"I guess it doesn't really matter," he murmured against her forehead and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her closer against him.

"The scars could be an asset," Cameron said as she leaned into his embrace, "evidence of combat against the machines." She didn't think John would see it that way but she wanted to reassure him.

"You're saying I was too pretty before?" John smiled. It faded as the burns started once again to irritate and he reached up one hand to his face.

"Don't scratch it!" Cameron shot out a hand and caught his wrist, his fingers a fraction of an inch away from the scabbing on his skin. She pulled away from his embrace and took out a medical kit she'd taken from the infirmary. She opened it up and took out more salve and wound dressings. John moved out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. He sat down on the single bed in the middle of the small room as Cameron came over to him and sat down on the bed next to him, resting one of her knees against his thigh. John placed his hands on the bed behind him and leaned back as Cameron started delicately rub salve into his burns.

"What is this room, anyway?" John asked as the salve started to cool the itching and burning on his face. Once they'd arrived on the carrier and debriefed with Wallace and Perry, John had been shown to a private cabin that looked far more luxurious than what he'd expected. The cabin consisted of three rooms; a simple bedroom, a basic bathroom with shower, sink and toilet, and a separate living room cum office with a desk and three chairs. He'd imagined on a ship like this everyone would be crammed into bunks together.

"Admiral's in-port cabin," Cameron replied.

John looked at her quizzically as she finished rubbing in the salve and took another dressing and fitted it to his face. "We don't have an admiral." He held it in place for her as she tore off several lengths of medical tape and started to secure the dressing to his face.

"We have a  _general,"_  Cameron answered as she stuck the last length of tape and sealed the dressing over his face. His burns would take several weeks to heal and she was determined to keep it clean until then.

"Is general better than admiral, then?" John wrapped an arm around her and leaned back, pulling her back onto the bed with him.

 _"This_  general is." Cameron had insisted with Wallace that John have his own private quarters on the ship. Wallace had offered his sea-cabin but Cameron saw the admiral's quarters presently unoccupied on the ship and had appropriated it for John's use. She'd moved the bags containing their few belongings into the cabin whilst John was in the shower.

"How long until we reach the Falklands?" John asked, pulling her closer. He agreed with her; it sounded like a good place where they could regroup, rearm, and even start training the refugees to fight back against the machines whilst John worked to re-establish contact with whoever was out there.

"Twenty-seven days," Cameron said. That was if they maintained their current speed.

"And until then?" John hated the idea of being cooped up on a ship for nearly four weeks. He'd much rather be out in the open.

"You rest," Cameron said, running a hand over his chest. She tilted her head up and kissed John gently. John deepened the kiss and Cameron opened her mouth and pulled him closer. She kept her eyes open as their lips and tongues reconnected with a fierce passion neither of them had experienced in months as their hands roamed across each other's bodies, stroking and caressing, and all the anguish and pain of the last six months faded away, leaving only two souls comforting each other in the bliss of their new private haven.

John's hands slid under Cameron's shirt and cupped her perfect mounds in his hands as he kissed her hard, and felt Cameron's hand slide between his legs...

 _"Ahh!"_ John pulled back and cried out in pain as she wrapped her hand around him. His loins were still swollen and bruised from George's torture but as Cameron pulled her hand away he stopped her. Pain or no, he wanted her as badly as she wanted him, and nothing was going to stop them.

A sly grin formed on Cameron's face as she understood his meaning. She pushed him down onto the bed, tore his towel off and peeled away her clothes piece by piece, leaving her completely nude before him. She crawled atop him and pressed her chest against his. "I'll be gentle," she whispered in his ear as she lowered herself onto him. They both gave out a low moan as they slowly joined together, in pleasure, content, and sheer bliss. The world was in a dire state and Skynet's machines were spreading across the globe, seemingly unstoppable. But for this one moment they could ignore all that as they moved as one and quietly cried out together. John and Cameron were at last reunited and all was right with the world.


End file.
